Common Crestron Issues: Overheating and Overloading

When you work with Crestron system at the highest level, you come to understand the pitfalls and issues that many less experienced installers fail to account for. All too often me and the rest of the Done Right Not Easy crew will be assigned to a cleanup of an existing system and find all sorts of avoidable issues affecting the functionality of the system as a whole. We’ve already discussed the importance of wiring in Crestron systems, and today we will be discussing two common problems with less experienced techs. Systems overheating and systems being under powered, both of which significantly affect performance.

Overheating

Electronic components by nature produce heat and do not operate properly when subjected to the heat they create.  A common failure of others is to not provide proper displacement of the heat created by these components.  We find all too often that pieces of electronic equipment are placed in cabinetry, closets, and other enclosures without proper ventilation or cooling, and in some cases no ventilation or cooling at all!  

Equipment that overheats is equipment that fails.  

Overheated equipment can run slow, intermittently, or not at all causing a malfunction of the overall control system. GMI makes sure that our equipment is installed in well ventilated areas. Our knowledge of the equipment we use allows us to anticipate the heat generation of a system and install additional cooling components when necessary.

Overloading

All parts of a control system need to communicate at correct intervals to keep the system alive and healthy.  What many inexperienced techs don’t know is that there are specifications pertaining to the maximum number of a certain type of device that can be on a communications loop prior to malfunction occurring.  We find far too often that others do not obey these rules, overload a communications chain with too many devices inevitably results in a system malfunction.  The irony here is that most control systems offer hubs, repeaters and similar components that can increase the number of devices able to communicate on a single loop.  Most other companies fall short in understanding what additional equipment may be needed to provide the system the heartbeat needed to stay alive and healthy.

We at GMI have a high level of understanding about how every part of the system communicates with every other part We knows when additional equipment is needed, and design, consult and bid our jobs appropriately as a result.

It’s not only our knowledge of the industry and equipment that separates us from the rest, but the fact that we go the extra mile to make sure every system is built right the first time. Overheated or overloaded systems are amatuer mistakes that have no place in the world of professionally integrated automation systems, period.