Our coach has a multiplex wiring system, where several control panels and features are networked together, so control panels in various places can operate things like shades, lights, TV lift, fans, and more.
Which is great when things work, but a truism of RVs is things are always breaking. One particularly vexing issue was that a control panel and two shades on our front passenger slide-out stopped working after moving the coach one time.
Here’s the control panel, with buttons for lights, shades, and TV lift — it should’ve been illuminated, but it wasn’t, and the buttons didn’t work:
The day and night shades in the living area are electric, so they can all go up or down at a touch of a button. Which again is nice if it works, frustrating if it doesn’t.
I contacted the manufacturer of the multiplex wiring, Spyder Controls, and their very friendly support staff spent lots of time helping me diagnose the issue, including trying different panels in different places, which proved that the control panel itself was not the fault. They got me to try squeezing the connectors, since apparently they can get loose. And even got me to order replacement connectors, and (once they arrived), talked me through replacing them on the control panel and shade controller.
Speaking of, here’s the shade controller (called the G5 shade module); a circuit board that takes the network connection and operates the day and night shades for the two shades on that slide. The green light was blinking, indicating that it had power but no network connection:
We also looked at the wiring in the house network panel (called G6), a rather complicated rats nest of wiring:
Meanwhile, since we couldn’t close the shades, we got some temporary curtains:
We lived like that for quite a while, and had an appointment with a service place, where fixing those issues would’ve been a top priority, since I hadn’t been able to solve them.
However, I recently looked through some pictures of the construction of the same model coach as ours that a kind person sent me, and noticed another connector — which made sense, since the wiring of the chassis and slide-out would be separate, but connected when the slide was installed. I wasn’t sure where it was, but looked inside an exterior panel behind the fridge:
Sure enough, I found a wire from the G6 panel, a couple of wires going to the control panel and shade module, and a hub-like connector between them (G4 common drop tap). Wouldn’t you know it, the cable from the G6 panel was disconnected, as the latch that held it in was missing. Here’s a crop of that pic, showing the bottom orange cable not fully seated:
Here I pushed it back in place:
And just like that, the shades started working again!
That didn’t fix the control panel. So I bought some more replacement connectors from Tiffin, and pulled off the panel again:
I noticed that I hadn’t done a very good job of (unnecessarily, as it turned out) replacing the connector, as I was rushing a bit, since the tech was on the phone. One of the wires was loose:
So I pulled off that connector and installed a new one:
And hey, it works!
Re-mounted:
Next, I replaced the broken connector behind the fridge, so it wouldn’t pop out again:
All better:
I’m really glad and relieved to have solved the shades and control panel issues at last. And very satisfying to have done the fixes myself. Not that I’m at all averse to paying someone to fix things for me, but it’s nice to be able to do it.
