pxi 8360 power led flashes red

[butlerww]

I have a PXI 8360 MXI Express board mounted in a PXI 1050 chassis. I am seeing the power LED occasionally flash red and I lose communication with the computer. The power LED will return to solid green status after a few minutes but I am not able to do much with NI DAQ to test the system since it has failed self test. The suspicion here is the power supply may be bad but how do we check that.

The system with the computer has worked well over the past several years and we are concerned about possible damage from a power fluctuation that happened here around Christmas time.

[xavvvv]

Which power light are you describing this behavior for? Is it the chassis' or the MXI board's power LED?

In general, flashing red power LEDs mean the power supply's output is not within voltage regulation requirements, so since you mentioned a power fluctuation happened recently your suspicion might be correct.

Are you getting this behavior when the PXI-PCI8360 card is the only one present in the chassis, or do you have other modules installed? Is there any pattern as to when this behavior occurs (is it intermittent? Is there a particular event happening with the installed modules, or with the building's power?). You could try changing outlets to a separate physical 120V circuit to confirm the power supply is the culprit. Check out this KB that gives a couple more troubleshooting steps: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/F87B88D68D25364E862578F7005E0F2A

Hope this helps

[butlerww]

Hi Xavier,

The red flashing light is on the PXI 8360. I have not seen any flashing lights on the chassis.

The modules present in the system are

PXI 8360  MXI Express

PXI 4071  7 1/2 digit flex DMM

PXI 4110  Programmable DC power supply

PXI 4110

PXI 4110

PXI 8252  1394 Host Adapter

TB 2627  multiplexer terminal block

PXI 6289  M series multifunction DAQ

SCXI 1306

SCXI 1303

SCXI 1303

SCXI 1300

So far all testing has been done with all modules installed. Another person has tried reseating all modules to see if that would fix the problem but it does not.

The system will work fine for a few hours and then the blinking LED will begin and somewhere near that time the communications fail with the computer. The light will blink for a few minutes and then will return to solid green. Once the error has occurred it seems that the only way to re establish proper operation is to shut down the whole system, PXI chassis and computer, and restart. I saw one time where the power LED on the 8360 went from flashing red to solid green when the computer was turned off.

The computer is  a Dell Precision 690 with PCIe 8361.

I will be opening up the chassis hopefully in the next day or two to check fuses and voltages where I can.

Bill

[butlerww]

I tried changing the outlet into which the chassis is plugged and found the power LED on the 8360 would start flashing red when I turned on the computer. The new outlet I measured with a multimeter and found it to be 121 VAC and the original outlet measured at about 124 VAC. I plugged the chassis back into the original outlet and was able to power up the system fine.

Bill

[Robert__R]

Bill,

The PXI-8360 measures a few power rails to determine that power is good (+3.3V, +5V, and +12V from the backplane, plus an onboard 1.5V rail).  If any are bad it turns the power LED red and asserts reset.  If power is good for 200 ms it deasserts reset and turns the power LED green.  It sounds like one of those rails is hugging the low end of its range and at times is drifting low enough that noise trips the power monitor repeatedly for a while (hence the flashing).  It could also be that it's dropping out briefly instead of sagging, but the result is the same.  When the temperature/input voltage/phase of the moon changes it gets better and returns to normal.  Since reset was asserted in the chassis, you won't regain operation without rebooting the PC.

If you can (safely) measure the power rails during one of the episodes it might point you in the right direction.  Some power shuttles have pots to adjust the voltages so it might be fixable.  I don't have a 1050 to look at, though.

- Robert

[butlerww]

We measured the system today and found that the +12V rail was at 9.5 Volts and the -12V rail was at -9.5 Volts. It looks like the drop in the AC power to about 121.5 Volts was enough to drop the 12 Volt lines too low for the 8360.

With the cards out the 12Volt rails looked about right  but there is about 800 mV of noise.

The 3.3V line and the 5 Volt line look good though on both of those I notice a transient at a frequncy of 125 KHz with an amplitude of 500 mV.

Does anybody know if this can be readjusted by the useer or if this is a return to factory for repair.

Bill

[xavvvv]

Hi Bill,

As far as I know, there isn't much you can do - the chassis' power supply seems to be the clear culprit here - especially with the 800 mV noise you described. An RMA is your best option.

Regards,

[erickschmidt]

Hello all,

BUMP on this topic, sorry.

I have an NI PXIe-1075 chassis (actually two of them), and I have a controller NI PXIe-8370. Not quite the 8360 but I beileve it's very similar.

Running on a Dell Inspiron Desktop PC Intel Core i5 4460 @ 3.2GHz, 12 GB RAM, Windows 8.1 64-bit.

I have the latest NI VISA, NI RFSG, NI PXI Platform Service, NI-DAQmx, LabVIEW 2015 32 & 64 bit, patches, everything latest. 

I am having a similar issue in that, when I boot Windows up, the PWR and LINK turn stable GREEN, but when I open NI-MAX and expand the Devices & Interfaces and click on the PXIe-1075 Chassis to configure it, it shuts down the whole Chassis and the PWR of the 8370 starts blinking red. This also happens even if I don't open NI-MAX, after a couple minutes the Chassis 1075 shuts down by itself and looses all communication with the Host PC.

I've tried the controller NI-PXIe 8370 on both Chassis and they both show the same behavior.

I also noticed that both Chassis 1075's serial numbers correspond to the following article:  

NI PXIe-1075 Chassis 3.3V 5V Drift

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/D86EB57963027BDE8625764F005B33E5 

I am worried if it's the controller or BOTH the chassis?

Any suggestions?

Might I be missing another driver or something?

Thanks

Erick

[Robert.W]

Erick,

I think your problem is a little bit different than the original post.  Try updating the firmware on the PXIe-8370 (see link below) in MAX then try to access your chassis again.  Note that you'll need to power down and physically unplug the 8370 after the firmware update, completely removing AUX power, to get it to load the new firmware image.

http://www.ni.com/download/ni-pxie-8370-firmware-2012.07.10.10/3685/en/

Let us know if that works for you.

Thanks,

robert

[erickschmidt]

Robert,

Thank you, it actually worked!

On one chassis, the other one I still have to try, because sometimes I can't even reach Windows to boot up completely before it shuts down by itself. For now I'm just using the first chassis that worked.