RF542 Remote Temperature Monitor

What battery do I need for my RF542?

The Lithium Battery required for the correct operation of the RF542 Remote Temperature Monitor is a Xeno AA Lithium Cell, model XL-060F. This cell can be obtained from most battery specialists or direct from Comark, order RF542BATT.

The use of any other type of 3.6V Lithium cell may not provide you with the normal battery life and correct operation of the RF542 Remote Temperature Monitor might be affected.

Transmitters show ‘No signal’

On occasion you may appear to suffer ‘signal loss’ between your Gateway device and your Transmitters. Initially, you should confirm that there are no ‘Low Battery’ warnings showing for your Transmitters on your Gateway Device.

Transmitters show ‘No signal’ when they have been continuously out of contact with the Gateway for a duration of 5 times the radio rate or a minimum of 1 hour. For the standard radio rate of 15 minutes, this amounts to approximately 1 hour 15 minutes before a ‘No signal’ is flagged. In that time, the Gateway has determined that it has not received a valid signal/data packet from the Transmitter.

The table below details some basic troubleshooting, should you encounter this issue:

Batteries only last a few months

Battery life quoted for RF5xx Transmitters makes a number of assumptions about the operating use and conditions. Transmitters are assumed only to transmit one data record to your RF500A/AP Gateway every 15 minutes. Operation of the Transmitter is assumed to be at ambient, approx. 23°C. Deviations from this specification will have an effect on the battery life of each Transmitter.

For example:

• Prolonged use at extremes of low or high temperature will reduce the battery life
• A Transmitter that has lots of alarm occurrences will also have a reduced battery life
• A System with poor radio coverage where the Transmitter has to constantly re-send its data to the Gateway will reduce the battery life

Low battery indication does not clear

The ‘Low Battery’ message on the homepage of the Gateway might not clear immediately after you have changed the battery of one of your transmitters.

When a Transmitter battery is replaced, it generates a ‘Battery Good’ event record and queues it for transmission to the Gateway. The ‘Low Battery’ message on the Homepage of the Gateway is cleared when the Gateway receives this ‘Battery Good’ record from the Transmitter. This event record is also posted to the Audit Trail as pictured below.

The Transmitter data queue could be several thousand records long and may take several hours before the ‘Battery Good’ record is sent. You can check this progress by looking for the last data on the homepage of the Transmitter. When the data is up-to-date then the ‘Low Battery’ warning should also clear.

The best way to avoid this delay is to change the battery soon after the first ‘Low Battery’ warning message is posted on the Gateway homepage. The longer the Transmitter is left in the low battery condition the longer the data record queue becomes.

Beware of re-tasking the Transmitter, because the data record queue is cleared as a result. The ‘Battery Good’ record will also be cleared and the Gateway ‘Low Battery’ message will not clear even through the Transmitter appears to be working normally.

Should this happen, then simply remove and refit the battery of the Transmitter in question, so that the Transmitter believes that a new battery has been fitted.

Door Sensor Alarms Explained

The following information explain the types of alarms generated by the Door Sensors connected to your RF500 Monitoring System.

Continuous Door Alarms

A Continuous Door Alarm is defined as an alarm that is triggered whenever a door is left continuously open for a period of more than X minutes.

Please refer to the ‘Door Alarms’ chapter under ‘Transmitter Alarms’ in the RF500-Webview Help Guide for a detailed explanation of Continuous Door Alarms.

Average Door Alarms

An average Door Alarm Door is defined as an alarm that is triggered whenever a door is left open for more than X minutes cumulatively, in a given period of up to 60 minutes. This alarm captures many individual shorter door open times, that may fail to trigger a continuous door alarm, but are nonetheless still important.

Please refer to the ‘Door Alarms’ chapter under ‘Transmitter Alarms’ in the RF500-Webview Help Guide for a detailed explanation of Average Door Alarms.

Reading Door Alarm Data

Both continuous and average door alarms are enabled or disabled together, therefore if the average door alarm is not required, setting the average limit equal to the average period causes the average alarm never to occur because the limit can not be exceeded.

Whenever a continuous door alarm is triggered an Event only is generated, tabular data will not be coloured to indicate the alarm.

A representation of tabular data shown above shows a typical reading. The readings reported for the door channel are given as two values:

• The first number is the cumulative number of minutes that the door has been open throughout the averaging interval, which in this example, is the preceding 60 minutes.
• The value in parentheses is the cumulative number of minutes that the door has been open throughout the averaging interval given as a percentage of the averaging interval.

The percentage gives a measure of how much time a door actually spends opened which could represent a problem in a real world application. Consider the following scenario:

A door to a laboratory is monitored using RF500 and the continuous alarm is set to 20 minutes to capture a “door left open” event. If that door is opened then closed after 19 minutes have elapsed, then immediately opened again for 19 minutes then closed, the continuous alarm event would not have been generated; however that door has effectively been open for 38 minutes during the previous 40 minutes or so. With an averaging interval of 60 minutes the RF500 system would report a door reading of approximately 63% or with an averaging interval of 40 minutes a door reading of close to 100% would be reported. It may be the case that this high level of “door open” condition may cause environmental controls to be overloaded.

RF5xx Transmitter Status Codes (COdE) Explained

Under certain conditions your RF5xx Transmitter might display a Status Code on the LCD screen which takes the form of the word ‘COdE’ followed by either a 3- or 4-digit alphanumeric sequence. These Status Codes can help in diagnosing the reason why a Transmitter might be failing to transmit data to the Gateway.

The ‘COdE’ based message is only seen on RF5xx Transmitters with Firmware Version 3.0.0 or higher.

It is worth noting that Status Codes generally indicate a problem, that can be resolved by the user. For detailed information on the Status Code that your RF5xx Transmitter is displaying, please select the appropriate code from those listed below:
 

RF5xx Transmitter Fault Messages (FAULt) Explained

Under certain conditions your RF51x Transmitter might display a Fault Message on the LCD screen which takes the form of the word ‘FAULt’ followed by either a 3- or 4-digit alphanumeric sequence. These Fault Messages are alerting you to a failure of some kind within the device.

A ‘FAULt’ based message is only seen on RF5xx Transmitters with Firmware Version 3.0.0 or higher.

It is worth noting that Fault Messages generally cannot be resolved by the user. For detailed information on the particular Fault Message that your RF5xx Transmitter is displaying, please select the appropriate variant from those listed below:

• Any ‘FAULt’ message ending in ‘1’

• Any ‘FAULt’ message ending in ‘2’

• Any ‘FAULt’ message ending in ‘4’

• Any ‘FAULt’ message ending in ‘8’

This article refers to a Fault message seen on Transmitters with Firmware Version 3.0.0 or higher. The following full fault messages are covered by this article: 

001,101,201,301,401,501,601,701,801,901,A01,B01,C01,D01,E01,F01,1001,1101,1201,1301,1401,1501,1601,1701,1801,1901,1A01, 1B01,1C01,1D01,1E01,1F01,002,102,202,302,402,502,602,702,802,902,A02,B02,C02,D02,E02,F02,1002,1102,1202,1302,1402,1502,1602,1702,1802,1902,1A02, 1B02,1C02,1D02,1E02,1F02,004,104,204,304,404,504,604,704,804,904,A04,B04,C04,D04,E04,F04,1004,1104,1204,1304,1404,1504,1604,1704,1804,1904,1A04, 1B04,1C04,1D04,1E04,1F04,008,108,208,308,408,508,608,708,808,908,A08,B08,C08,D08,E08,F08,1008,1108,1208,1308,1408,1508,1608,1708,1808,1908,1A08, 1B08,1C08,1D08,1E08,1F08

RF5xx Transmitter Error Messages (ErrOr) Explained

Under certain conditions your RF5xx Transmitter might display an Error Message on the LCD screen which takes the form of the word ‘ErrOr’ followed by either a 3- or 4-digit alphanumeric sequence. These Error Messages can help in diagnosing the reason why a Transmitter might be failing to transmit data to the Gateway.

The ‘ErrOr’ based message is only seen on RF5xx Transmitters with a Firmware Version 2.4.2 or lower.

It is worth noting that these Error Messages generally indicate a problem, that can be resolved by the user. For detailed information on the Error Message that your RF5xx Transmitter is displaying, please select the appropriate code from those listed below:

• ErrOr 001

• ErrOr 002

• ErrOr 004

• ErrOr 010

• ErrOr 100

• ErrOr 200

• ErrOr 400

• ErrOr 800