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11
Other Electronics / Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt
Last post by SparWeb -
The little wire shunt didn't work.  Shrug, worth a try, and not much too lose.

Yes with some light and a magnifying glass I can see that under the DIP switch panel there's still a lot more crap under there probably corroding the rest away, maybe other pins are about to go next.  A proper fix is only to de-solder the whole DIP switch block (16 pins) and put a new one on.  That wouldn't be too hard or expensive, so I think I'll try it.  First just for the challenge and second for the chance to restore a devise that has otherwise worked well for many years.

I tried prying the heat-sink off but the FET's are stuck on tightly and I didn't want to break anything.  Nonetheless Morningstar tells me it's possible and provides instructions to do it in a manual for ambitious folks who want to de-solder and replace burned out MOSTFETs.  That doesn't seem to be my problem but if the heat sink can be removed that would help me access and replace the DIP switch panel.
12
Batteries and management systems / Re: AGM Battery Resting Voltage
Last post by MaryB -
Quote from: SparWeb – on
On the most trustworthy true RMS meters:
Meterman 37x: 12.94+12.96+12.95+12.97 = 51.82V
Fluke 374 clamp with leads: 12.9+12.9+12.9+13.0 = 51.7V

Earlier today I did some troubleshooting on the Tristar charge controller.  It was pulling 25Amps out of the batteries for a while in "Load control" mode during my tests, which has cut down the voltage from 52.0 a little.

So close to where mine rested... I would say nothing wrong...
13
Other Electronics / Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt
Last post by MaryB -
That will work but MAKE SURE to clean every bit of gunk from under the switch. That is a double sided circuit board and gunk tends to eat the copper pads. If there are any electrolytic capacitors above that switch check then to see if any bulged and leaked and replace them... they have a finite life span...
14
Other Electronics / Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt
Last post by SparWeb -
I think I can solder a little piece of wire across the DIP 2 pins and make it a permanently Closed switch.  Then the Tristar would work on 24v and 48v batteries, but I'd have to be careful if I wanted to do other bench tests on it, because a 12v test setup wouldn't work.
15
Other Electronics / Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt
Last post by SparWeb -
The Testing manual guides you through several tests.  I had to re-do some because I didn't follow the instructions properly.
But the main obstacle I had was finding a suitable power supply for the tests.  They specified that the power supply needs to provide "18-20V" and be "current limited".  Well I really don't have a bench power supply that does that any more.  I spent some time cobbling together a few batteries that would give me about 24v to work with and then I connected an ammeter that has a fuse in it to provide the current limit.  After all that was set up, not before, I turned around and realized that I had a spare solar panel leaning against the work table all this time!  duh

Tristar_Test_2026-05-24.jpg

Above is the Tristar passing a battery recharge test.  I made it through all the tests and the Tristar didn't fail any of them.  Hmm.
I tried doing several things that didn't do any good so I won't waste your time describing them.

Out of ideas, I gave it a good cleaning while it was out and discovered a huge wad of gunk on the DIP switch panel.  Cleaning the gunk off I could tell that the gunk has oozed under the DIP switches too.  Since then I've been focused on figuring out if the DIP switches are the cause of all the problems.  At first I thought DIP 7 was the culprit, having the worst of the gunk under it.  Tried a few ways to clean under it more vigorously, but failed.  A long time later (I'm really slow it seems) I realized I could test for continuity on DIP switches easily.  Once I did that, it became obvious that DIP 2 is not closing when switched, and remains in the open state all times.  All of the other DIP switches went from open to closed when switched. 

Tristar_Detail_2026-05-24.jpg

From this I'm able to conclude that DIP switch 2 being stuck open causes the Tristar to think it's always in 12 Volt mode, even when set to 48 volt mode.  For a diversion charge controller to think it's set to 12V, but hooked up to a 48V system, it would indeed run the diversion at 100%, because it thinks the battery is overcharged.  It also explains why it passed the tests yesterday, because those tests only used 12V batteries.
16
Other Electronics / Tristar TS60 Repair attempt
Last post by SparWeb -
TLDR: I haven't fixed it yet.  But I'm closer to knowing what's wrong!

Something went wrong with my TriStar TS-60 a month ago.  Probably while I was messing around with something else and connected the Sol-Ark inverter to the batteries while the Tristar was still connected.
I've already learned that the Tristar and Sol-Ark don't get along, but I forgot, and had a panicky moment running to the breaker to shut off the Tristar but the damage was done.  And since the Tristar was being forced to run its diversion load at 100% by the Sol-Ark at the time, I think shutting down the Tristar that way caused it to have a disconnect while it still had diversion load terminals energized. 

I knew something was wrong when I went to reactivate the wind turbine system.  The Tristar was locked into 100% diversion, even at modest battery voltage.  No change of settings would convince it to stop running the diversion load at full power.

A replacement Tristar is on its way (should be here soon) but in the meantime I wanted to see if I could fix the Tristar, or at least figure out what I'd done to it.

Helpful: The Morningstar website has a Testing manual AND at Repair manual for download.  These days that's almost unheard of.  The test manual has a series of procedures to follow to help you figure out what's wrong.  I'll follow up with a post about doing these tests, but right now I have to go and find where I left my cell phone...
17
Batteries and management systems / Re: AGM Battery Resting Voltage
Last post by SparWeb -
On the most trustworthy true RMS meters:
Meterman 37x: 12.94+12.96+12.95+12.97 = 51.82V
Fluke 374 clamp with leads: 12.9+12.9+12.9+13.0 = 51.7V

Earlier today I did some troubleshooting on the Tristar charge controller.  It was pulling 25Amps out of the batteries for a while in "Load control" mode during my tests, which has cut down the voltage from 52.0 a little.
19
Batteries and management systems / Re: AGM Battery Resting Voltage
Last post by MaryB -
My smaller 100ah agms rested at 12.6 volts...

have you measured at the batteries with a calibrated voltmeter? Cheap voltmeters can drift off calibration.

Another thing to check if the wire run between batteries and voltmeter is long and/or if it passes near any transformers... I had to use shielded cable to my Tristar TS-RM-2 meter(remote meter for the MPPT45/60 charge controllers) because it would pick up voltage when I transmitted on my ham radio and then stay reading high until I unplugged it for awhile.
20
Batteries and management systems / AGM Battery Resting Voltage
Last post by SparWeb -
Last year I purchased a set of 4 Rolls S12-230AGM-RE batteries.  They've been installed since October and working great since then.  I don't have a problem but instead I'm observing something that doesn't seem normal (at least in my experience).

For the past month, the batteries have been "at rest" meaning there is no charge or discharge on them.  Also for the past month, I've noticed that their total voltage has remained at "52.0V" all that time.  I think I was expecting them to rest at about 50V, maybe a bit higher.  Converting to a per-unit measurement they average: 52/4 = 13.0V each.  Is this normal for an AGM battery?

Ruling things out:  The two different sources that could recharge these batteries (an inverter and a wind turbine) have been disconnected at the breaker and shut down, respectively.  There haven't been any unusually hot or cold temperatures here (Calgary).  The batteries power a little LCD voltage meter that's been displaying "52.0" plus or minus 0.1 all this time, but that's a phantom load, not something that would supply a charge.

I've consulted some data for these AGM's on the Rolls website's support pages.  I found a chart of open-circuit voltage versus SOC which suggests that 100% SOC has a resting voltage of 12.8 to 12.9V, which is getting close to what I see.  But that's for 25degrees C, and these batteries live at ambient temperature, which is more like 0 - 10 degrees C in the spring. I should add that I don't think these batteries really were at 100% SOC when they were disconnected. In early April, the temperature would have been about 5 degrees C, meaning the maximum SOC would have been about 90%.  If I made a prediction based on this information, I would expect 12.6V * 4 = 50.4V today.  The same charts show that self-discharge isn't a factor at these temperatures (which is great).

Does anyone see anything unusual about 52.0V?
(or 13.0V per battery, I should say?)