2009 Symbol Control Panel problems

I am in a right mess.   I have a 2009 Symbol.  For years we have had problems with the Control panel which keeps showing nonsense characters on the screen.

I sent it Apuljack a few years ago and they said they had fixed it but the problem persisted.   They had it back and after testing said there was nothing wrong with it.   Despite this and their recent repair they insisted I send them a testing fee before they would return it.    

It has continued to play up but I was reluctant to send it back again.

I have got round the problem by unplugging the unit to make it reboot each time the problem has occurred

That is untii today when rebooting doesnt fix it any more and it permanently reports low battery - shut down.   The battery is fine and the DC voltage is 13.8v

I need to sort this ASAP but I am not sure where to turn.   I would be happy to replace the control panel with old fashioned switches but I dont have a schematic showing what pin does what.  Does anyone have any info which might help either fixing or replacing the existing panel or upgrading to a new one

This is the control panel.  Its labelled ZF0251



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Peter

This thread from 2017 may help, it gives contact details for MES that made the panel. There is a replaceable button battery , does that need changing?

Thanks for the reply but what thread from 2017?

Button battery isn't the problem.  Tried that

drpeej wrote:Thanks for the reply but what thread from 2017?

Button battery isn't the problem.  Tried that

Sorry, forgot the link...

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GOOD NEWS!!

I worked logically through the wiring to try to understand it.  

Guess what?  I found a blown fuse which appears to be the one that powers the control panel.   I replaced it and it is working again.   Why did it blow? I hear you ask.  I think it must have happened when I was poking around with a multimeter yesterday and I shorted a couple of pins.

All seems OK again and the process has given me a better understanding of how it all works which cant be bad.

Fingers crossed. 

Well done that man. . . . . but just wait till you get a newer van with Reeeeeely complex computerised (out of) control panels and vast amounts of data whizzing around the camper getting confused on the way.
The very unfortunate two facts of modern motorhome manufacture are:
1) It is cheaper to make everything controlled by a data bus running round the place than it is to make and wire in electrical switches
2) Gullible showroom viewers are easily taken in by everything working (or not) via a touch screen panel and a phone app.
The extension of this is that alloy wheels look lovely and shiny in the showroom, do absolutely nothing for you when driving, and within two weeks are all mucky and very un-shiny. But by then, they have done their job selling it to you and you have paid £800 more than if the van had steel wheels.

I have some experience with CANBUS having built a 3D printer with it.   It's great when it works but I can be a nightmare to debug.   Of course the dealers all have whizzy software that makes sense of it all but that just allows them to charge £££ to look at it.

The old-school ribbon cable connectors in my Symbol are a lot easier to understand but there is no documentation that tells you what connects to what.   My Symbol came with a diagram of sorts which gave cable colours but a lot of them are wrong.

We looked at a new van a few years ago but stuck with the Symbol and I'm so glad we did

Peter

The dealers will charge £80 - £120 (plus Vear And Tear) to 'look at it'. Which in some ways is fair enough. If their subsequent actions are based on intelligence and not on what the Computer says. However my very expensive experience is that they just change what The Computer says Must Be Changed. Not the part that is faulty, the part that the computer says is faulty. They just keep changing bits till the fault goes away, and the customer has to pay for all the new unnecessary £400 - £900 items that have been changed along the way.
Eventually (or very quickly) the customer gets fed up with this, and in my case went out and bought a 25 yr old motorhome without any computers that lie. I have concluded that in fact it is cheaper to pay the occasional £100 fine for accidentally violating a low emissions zone than it is to keep paying out for repairs to a squeaky clean breathable exhaust vehicle.
A needle on a gauge reading volts - for example fuel tank, water temperature, battery volts hardly ever goes wrong. They have substituted all that for a CAN bus with ultra sensitive sensors which go wrong, and touch sensitive screens which go wrong, and heater controls controlled by CAN bus which goes wrong. The customer (me) gets bills for hundreds of pounds for incorrect fault diagnosis (from four different garages currently) where a simple voltage-across-a-resistor will cause a needle to deflect correctly and a heater control knob will cause more or less water to flow through the heater matrix. But flashy controls demonstrated by a whizzo salesperson in a showroom somehow persuade gullible customers to buy the thing.