Y2K-10 Fix For Smart Flex/AS Controllers

WARNING! Before you reset your SmartFlex or SmartAS clock to the correct year, you must first download the historical data from the controller to avoid losing the data.

At the turn of the year 2010 the clock of all SmartSeries controllers roll back to the year 2000. In other words, instead of going from December 31, 2009 to January 1, 2010, the clocks go from December 31, 2009 to January 1, 2000.

This Y2K-10 bug (as we at PFC are calling it), will result in two (2) problems with your controller:

1. Apparent loss of historical data in your Trackster 2 program. For example: You download historical data on January 1, 2010 and then attempt to create a Trackster 2 report on that data. You will notice that Trackster 2 claims there is no data from December 1, 2009 through January 1, 2010. The reason for this is due to the fact that the SmartFlex or SmartAS controller's clock was changed to the year 2000. Therefore, all of your December 2009 and January 2010 data will be in Trackster 2 as December 1999 and January 2000 data. If you were to recreate your report and set the Start and End Dates to December 1999 and January 2000, you should see your most recent data.
2. The second problem that is incurred at the turn of the year is the Biocide Timers do not work properly. For example: The recorded biocide feed shows 45 days on a 28 day cycle control.

Fixing the Historical Data Problem

For piece of mind, you may want to manually download historical data (via HyperTerminal) from the SmartSeries controller to your computer. Doing so will make it possible for you to have a hard copy of the historical raw data. The raw data may not be as user friendly to look at compared to a Trackster report, but at least you will be able to reference the data if necessary.

If you are interested in downloading the historical data from your SmartSeries controllers via HyperTerminal, please watch the help video titled "Download Multiflex Data Via HyperTerminal". Note the video was created for a Multiflex controller download, however the concepts that are described in the video will be enough to show you how to download historical data from a SmartSeries controller and save the data to your computer. If you are not familiar with SmartSeries commands, PLEASE NOTE THAT THE HISTORICAL DATA DOWNLOAD COMMAND IS "DAA" (without quotes).

If you have downloaded the historical data via HyperTerminal and you saved the data to your computer, you may be interested in viewing the data in an Excel Spreadsheet. If you are intested to learn how to import SmartSeries raw data into Excel, please watch the video titled "Import Controller Data Into Microsoft Excel".

After you have confirmed you have access to your controller's historical data for the month of December 2009, you will need to change the clock of the controller to the correct date.

Fixing the Biocide Timer Problem

To fix the Biocide Timers follow these steps:

1. If you haven't already done so, reset the controller's clock to the correct year
2. Delete the existing schedule for the Biocide Timers, then add the schedules back in

If you need assistance in this matter from a PFC technician, please call us at (800) 909-9283.