Corrections On Wiring the Viessmann 4016

Soldering the wires for Viessmann 4016

Since these days I've been starting to prepare the landscape for the retaining walls that will sit behind the Faller station, supporting the track going up, things have to be in order. A bunch of wires however sat in the way - the connections for the only Viessmann 4016 signal on the layout, not yet installed. After testing each LED of the signal using the transformer, the signal's own wires were soldered to the feeders already on the layout. However when powering up, with power from the panel board and hooking up the laptop to the USB interface controlling the aspects for this signal - something odd: the main signal would not show Hp2, but only Hp1 (a list of signal aspects can be found in the Viessmann 401x manual, there's one online here). Also the Hp0+Sh1 wouldn't turn on the shunting lights. On the distant signal part, it was even stranger - only the ge2 LED will be on, and cyclic through the aspects wouldn't trigger any change.

  Turns out there were 2 factors causing it:

  1. The plugs at the end of the wires coming out of the Viessmann modules and leading to the connectors on the panel board had poor contact. The fact the the tiny metal tubes - where the plugs fit - are actually made out of two halves doesn't help, since if the bent wire happens to slide between, there will be no contact. Fiddling with the plugs made the dark LEDs issue go away

   2. I wrongly *assumed* that it's the brown output of the Viessmann transformer that's supposed to to be used as input to the desired states on the 5220 module, but it turns out this isn't so. After quickly reading through the manual and running across a diagram for a normal + distant signal on the same mast, showing the wire leading to the rt1 LED being used as input for the "dark aspect" of the distant signal, it become obvious it's the yellow that's needed. Also, I only accounted for 3 aspects of the distant signal in my original plan, when in fact there's an additional one - Vr0 - displayed when neither of the inputs are ON. Looking back I didn't knew what the aspects were supposed to be in the first place, nor what the correct wiring was. Reading the manual thoroughly made things clearer.

As for the wiring of the distant signal, in order not to use an additional relay of a Phidget 1017 (there's still 1 left on one board and 5 on another), I've took advantage that the "dark aspect" of the distant signal is only "showed" when the main signal on the same mast is in a Hp0 state (or Hp0+Sh1). By also using the fact that all the relays on the 1017 are DPDT (double pole double throw), the output selecting between the groups Hp0/Hp+Sh1 and Hp1/Hp2 was used to toggle between feeding the "dark aspect" input, or serving as input itself to yet another relay switching between Vr0 (essentially no wire connected) and (yet !) another relay switching between Vr1 and Vr2. The photo below shows the yellow wire, which is connected to the yellow Viessmann transformer output, used as input. There are 2 green wires used as outputs - the one labelled "OFF 5220" is actually the one controlling the "dark aspect"; the red electrical tape further up was used to cover the soldering needed to extend this wire, originally connected to a different relay. The other green wire is the one leading to the stairway mechanism mentioned above - the empty output on the next relay can be clearly seen.