Drolet ECO-55 all buttons do not respond anymore.

[daudet]

Hi Everyone.
Strange thing did happen to my Drolet ECO-55
Last night was my first power on of the season.
Everything went well. Before going to bed i did press the + button to have the second LED On and pressed the AUX button to get High FAN.
This morning i wanted to put the fan in normal mode by pressing AUX and press the - button to get back to LED #1.
But no response.
+ and - buttons does not work anymore. AUX button not responding either. Try the MODE to turn off, again it does not work.
Try RESET button same thing,
I add to unplug the AC power cord. Then reconnected the AC and niet, no more LED on the panel.
When i a try to remove the right side pannel then the display showed the code "C" which is: Power Outage occured, The unit will shut down and restart, resetting the error code by itself.
Then i let it go and later the stove was back operating with my last setup with Pellet feed LED to 2 and Fan to High
Again i have no control on it cant Power Off of make any changes with + and - or AUX and Mode.

Any idea what is the cause before i call Drolet Service?

Thanks
Daniel.
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

 

[daudet]

Just got off the phone with Drolet Customer service.
Could be the Membrane keyboard that is defective or the flat ribbon cable not seated properly.
They told me to stop the stove by opening the lid until the temper switch give instruction to CPU to initiate the shutdown.
It is much safer than simulating a power failure.
Then i will open the control box and check all the connexions see if i can find anything.
I may end up to change the Keyboard.
Stay tune i will post the result later.
Daniel.

 

[daudet]

Well i did test the membrane keyboard with a multimeter and as i pressed every key i had the appropriate contact closure on each of the pin. By the way on the flat ribbon conector, Pin 7 is the common, and Pin 1 to 6 are associated to eachof the 6 buttons

Another call to Drolet Service center and the next step is looking at the connector that link the 2 printed circuits board together.
There was a HotGlue chunck that was covering the connector. I took it off.

There was a gap of 1/8 of an inch between the Male and Female connector. I could see the gold ping.

So after looking carefully to the assembly the 4 whites post (standoff) that keep the 2 boards together were not installed properly.
So the manufacturer had to squeeze the 2 boards togetherin the center near the connector so the pins are fully inserted and then they put a chunk of hot glue to hold them in place.

But the heat of the stove did its job after 3 years and the board split back as the glue streched which had for effect to remove the contact between the board.

So i compressed the board at each corner and with a small screw driver i did split the plastic tab left and right of the main post to secure it in place. See #1 on the picture.

After doing so at the 4 corners i gained that extra 1/8" and then i put a new chunk of hot glue on the connector to secure it. Connector is in the Red Box

Reassembled everything in the stove and Voila it is like new now.