Troubleshooting a Technogym Runrace treadmill - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 03:30:22 am
content: Good night, I have a friend that has a gym, and has I've been his tech savy friend that fixes the pc's and laptops around the house, I got presented with this:It is a fairly old treadmill, but it was very, very expensive and is a lot better than the other treadmills in the gym(as the users say), the problem is that the treadmill doesn't work, it has a large 20x2 char lcd that just displays a full line of squares, so I though it was something with the cpu, has the squares indicate that the lcd controller is not initialized, an afternoon disassembling the thing and there where some traces corroded by an old button battery that leaked, fixed them, and nothing, so scope out, and lets check some pins, the micro is running, or at least has a clock in the clock out-put pin, it also buzzes, like nothing else, god its awfull, and annoying.The only thing I can get with my google fu is that when the treadmill beeps and has a line of black squares in the screen it his the motor controller/driver, which is a big VFD, because the treadmill is a single phase thingy, but has a nice three phase engine with encoders to maintain a fixed velocity, the only information is that it might be damaged, but the VFD doesn't show any error messages, I'm puzzled with this thing.So...Does anyone has ever worked in one of this treadmills, or happens to have great google fu or a nice database of manuals and has the service manual for this beast?The micro-controller is a Motorolla mc68hc16z1cfc167, user guide here:http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/user_guide/MC68HC16ZUM.pdfAnd the VFD is a Hitachi j100 igbt inverter f5, and I could only find a french manual:http://www.esco.be/download/documents/hitachi_manual_j100_fr.pdfThe wiring inside the treadmill is all nice and tidy, but it has around 40 individual wires all going to sockets and boards, and there are only 5 distinct colors, its really great trying to follow a wire inside itMy only hope is that it is a loose wire in the VFD and that the CPU some how knows that there is a fault and beeps away, but I can't understand how can it talk to the VFD has there is no apparent serial interface, just individual inputs and outputs, but nothing fancy..This is quite a post, so I will stop here, and will thank you just for reading this

author: Strada916
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 04:06:26 am
content: First point of call would be the power supply. Check all the Electrolitic caps for bulge. Is the PSU SMPS or linier? An ESR meter may be handy at this stage to check all the ele. caps out. From there I would then check all voltages in the PSU are correct or at least look correct. There should be some sort of silk screen showing the voltages? Anyways thats what I would do. What is the battery connected to ie what chip? Could be some sort of volatile memory has been cleared due to the cattery going flat. Poor design if that is the case.

author: pickle9000
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 04:54:52 am
content: Good advice, if you have the old batt, check the voltage. If it's flat then disconnect the newly installed one for 12-24 hours. If you had the corrosion around surface mount devices then a good cleaning is in order, pay special attention to thru holes, and corroded leads on chips. Lightly scrape down the lead and the space in between, wash with iso then blow out with canned air. Examine your work and allow to dry well before powering up.I normally clean only the areas that need it and no where else.

author: David_AVD
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 05:22:32 am
content: If the LCD is not even initialising don't go chasing other areas like the VFD. The display should work even if there are other faults, so check the PSU and clean up corrosion first.Checking the VFD now would be like checking the car's exhaust system when it still has a flat battery.

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 11:15:33 am
content: Ups, forgot to mention, the battery was/is for a SRAM to save custom workouts, I also thought it was like the old HP's that had critical data in a battery backup, but the software seems to be in a pair of EEPROMS, I hope that the SRAM contents where not critical, the battery was marked 3v, so I got a pair of AA's just to test, but the thing remained dead.There is no silkcreened voltages, just component designators, the main board supply is rock solid(generated from a local 7805), no caps seem to be bulging, was one of my first checks, and really hoped to chalk it off to some crappy caps, today I will try to disassemble it a bit further, pull the VFD out and strip the electronics down to get to the power supply and see if there is something wrong.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 12:04:44 pm
content: Wow, that is areallycomplicated treadmill... see if you can test the controller and VFD separately, or scope the comms between the two.Posting some pictures might also help.

author: David_AVD
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 12:45:37 pm
content: I know nothing about treadmills, but common sense and checking the basics is your first port of call.If the power is good, check the oscillator (crystal, resonator, etc) for the micro. Also check the reset line for the correct level. If the micro never starts, the LCD will never get initialised and you'll have a dead machine.

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2013, 07:55:14 pm
content: Hello, yes I have checked everything around the cpu and he seems fine, I even forced a reset and the clock-output goes away under reset, so it must be running, I have just cracked the bottom section and now the inverter is finally giving error, error 8, error 9 and error 14, error 14 is probably caused to the extension cord, but I will get another as running this without ground is very dangerous.Error 8 is probably the killer, EEPROM error, the configuration is probably corrupted and it might be tripping a cheksum error in the inverter, error 9 isn't much better, its surge detection, there was a big storm some months ago, with lots of power failures, so it might have all started with a hefty power surge..Is there any way to maybe hook up a serial cable to the inverter to read back the configuration so I can try to do a hard reset and re-program the thing?Worst case I will try to swap the eeprom, as the manual sort of indicates it is only used to store the configuration values.