If you run into a situation where a valve or auxilary circuit on your Pentair pool controller no longer functions at all, don't despair! Assuming the required electrical connections are good, the fault isn't caused by a programming error, and you're trying to control the valve or aux circuit at the outdoor panel (and not using screenlogic or a remote), you may just have a blown relay driver chip... these are cheap and easy to replace. Aux circuits AND valves are actually controlled by relays which are either on-board, or in the load center. The aux relays are the large-ish 2" x 1.25" Omron devices that are bolted to the load center/enclosure, while the valve relays are the smaller .5 x .25" relays that are soldered onto the outdoor control board (or personality board for Intellitouch). Valve relays on an Intellitouch personality board They're all 24vdc relays, which means 24 volts dc is required to "energize" their coils. The micro-c...
I was sent a Pentair Intellitouch Indoor Control panel from a gentleman who said the controller showed nothing on the display, made all kinds of noise, and got so hot that it browned the white plastic base. He was worried it was going to catch fire! When I received the unit the first thing I did was a visual inspection. Nothing was immediately obvious so I connected it to my bench power supply and turned it on... upon power-up it beeped, screeched, and the on-board 5 volt regulator (U8 in the bottom right) got very hot. The preset 1/2 amp current limit kicked in almost immediately, making the voltage drop under 5 vdc so the board couldn't control the piezo speaker (hence all the beeping and screeching). These units typically draw around 140-180mA (depending on your led/lcd brighness settings), but this one instantly cruised past the 500mA limit. The over-current condition was a clear indication that there was a short somewhere. A more thorough insp...