Erratic/bouncing Temps - Brown out?

[mycarr]

Over the weekend I had my maiden voyage on my herms system. I hooked up the BCS and when I started checking the temps they were all over the place. They bounced all over with jumps up to 10 degrees. Later I hooked it back up for fermentation and had the same results.
I have had the BCS working great (very stable and accurate) for probably the last 6 months for my fermentation and have not had any problems.
A couple things I tried to isolate the problem-
*eliminated all electrical equipment that could be causing interference
*unhooked all other ins-outs and left only one temp probe.
*Tried different elec. circuits
*tried hard resets (10-20 & 20-30 sec)
Nothing changed the outcome...

A couple of weeks ago I had a brownout that lasted sometime. I did have some other electronics that fried. is it possible/probable that it also affectected my BCS?

I have the BCS460 with likely 3.1 or 3.2 firmware
I use 3 temp probes from ECC
What are my options here?
Thank you much, Mike

[JonW]

Did you attach/detach any temp probes while the BCS unit was powered up? I've found that I get very erratic results when I hot-connect temp probes. A power cycle (NOT software reboot) always seemed to correct the issue for me.

[mycarr]

Thanks for your input JonW.
I do not beleive that I did connect / disconnect while powered on but...
Also I had powered down and back on a couple time with the same results.
Could you describe what would happened when you did this? Did it bounce all over? on all temps or only the one "Hot Connected"?
I am really hoping that it just needs a Re-Flash or something and that it is not a permanent hardware problem.

[JonW]

I was seeing multiple ones bounce when I had hot-connected them. I'm also seeing it a little right now on my fermenter, but I think I know why on that. I recently remoted the fermenter to the opposite side of my garage and used about 35' of wire to extend the tem probe. I used some alarm wire that I had laying around and it is not twisted like CAT-5 cable. I think running it that far without using twisted pair is causing it to pick up some noise. This only affects the single temp probe that is on the long run.

[ECC]

If other electronics were fried, the BCS could have been affected as well. I'll PM you details on getting it checked out.

[mycarr]

Problem solved thanks to the great technical support @ ECC.
Turns out the power supply suffered damage in the Brown-Out which was the cause of the erratic temp fluctuations.

From shipping it to them for an expert look-over the problem was quickly isolated and the fix ended up very cheap!Only a new power supply.
Again many thanks for the great support of a great product. Prompt support + fast shipping = Happy Customer.
Can't wait to fire the HERMS back up with the BCS in proper order!
-Cheers-