Hi Nate,
I would like to have one Conversion Kit Pro from batch 2401. I don`t need ethernet connection anyways.
Thanks in advance.
Alex
Hi @nate - would it be too much trouble to sell the 2401 batch without ethernet? I am not a tinkerer, would like to have some, but don’t want you to take a loss on them since I love your system.
This is sad news and hopefully something you can get some recompense for from the manufacturer!
For those of us not in North America who have already been landed with one of these broken boards, can you reassure us that we will receive replacements?
In my case I have one of the few 2310s that were also afflicted by the same Ethernet issue. But as I’m in Germany I have been told that I need to contact a reseller to get a replacement. Given that they have no boards in stock and the packaging anyway does not indicate batch numbers what will be done to prevent this happening again?
Normally yes this is our policy when purchased through a non-U.S. distributor, but in this extenuating circumstance we should send you a replacement directly. At the present time, there are no new Alarm Panel Pros in-stock at any of our distributors that we know of. We are completely out of stock here at Konnected HQ as well. Batch 2403 has just finished production and is in QA with the manufacturer now.
I will reach out to you directly to arrange the replacement.
We’ve already implemented a more extensive QA process and we will be testing the Ethernet link quality on every board from batch 2403 when we receive them. We’re also making changes to the internals of the board design (will apply to future batches 2404 and beyond) to mitigate the problem.
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I would be interested in purchasing 2 of the 2401 boards in a conversion kit, if they are still available. WiFi only would be fine in my case.
@nate - i would be interested in the boards without ethernet as well. I am experimenting with the existing alarm in my old house. No ethernet cables inplace, and i would rather not run them if i dont have to. 
I already have 3 of the standard boards to run the alarm sensors i have. The integration with smarthings has been great for me. But when we had a friend house sit, the “modern approach” was a bit much. So i am looking into keeping the panels for those visiters to use.
Question:
I have multiple alarm panels, already installed, from the existing alarm. Would i be correct that i need a peo board for each panel i want to activate?
Thanks!
Hi Nate, are you still on track to ship out batch 2403 this week?
Quick update here. We were expecting to have boxes full of Alarm Panel Pro boards today, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Apparently the manufacturer has run into some QA issues once again with batch 2403 and they’ve pumped the brakes on shipping the boards to us and are continuing to investigate.
Here’s what I know so far:
A few weeks ago, the manufacturer produced a few boards from the new batch 2403 PCBs and components and we tested them, and they passed 100%. I have three of them here on my desk, and there’s one more still at the manufacturer as the “golden sample”. Given this good news, we decided to move forward with manufacturing the full quantity of batch 2403.
On Friday the manufacturing was completed and the manufacturer tested a random sampling of boards. Apparently, the failure rate was much higher than expected, but as of now I’m having a hard time getting exact numbers from them. At this point they decided to test every single board, and that process carried on thru yesterday and today.
I still don’t have percentages, counts or numbers, but from the sound of it … it’s bad. It seems like they’ve identified a quality issue once again, however this time it’s very difficult for them to blame impedance on the PCBs because we have here physical proof that some units from this same batch of PCBs is working 100%. So, I suspect that there is something going on in the manufacturing process and they’re currently scrambling to find a fix.
The bottom line is, we don’t have working Alarm Panel Pro boards still. I’m putting a lot of pressure on them for answers and I hope to update you soon with timeline and next steps.
I’m frustrated. I know you are too.
Only peripherally relevant but I recently ran across an example of just how tricky some of this stuff can be, this is a worked example of how hard it is to get from what should work to what actually works (some electronics knowledge required to follow the discussion). Possibly of interest to users thinking “how can it be so hard”, that thread illustrates just how tricky some of this stuff is.
Sorry to hear of your troubles Nate. You must be thinking about running a small batch with another manufacturer to rule out any design issues with the board. I wish you well and I look forward to ordering a Pro as soon as the issues are resolved.
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UPDATE - This morning I received a small portion (about 10%) of the Alarm Panel Pro boards from batch 2403 that passed QA at the manufacturer. They’re still holding on to the remaining for continued testing and remediation. It seems like we’re not out of the woods yet, so to speak.
I’ve tested these that just arrived and most of them are working well! Finally we have some working Pros to ship! This partial shipment will barely make a dent in the backorders that we need to ship out, but at least it’s something. Orders are going out in the order that they were received.
I’m still waiting on communication from the manufacturer about next steps and timelines for the remainder.
This is great news. Is there any way to see where we are in line?
Oh goodness this must be stressful for you all!
I don’t know what your base tests cover, but worth checking output 1 and 2 as well as the NIC. On batch 2301’ couldn’t get them to work with any kind of piezo buzzer - passive or active (5 different ones tested, as well as the official one from the accessories kit). Didn’t have time to test with a multimeter before I left for a trip but just FYIing.
Ok a lot has happened since last night, and finally some sunshine is coming through!
To their credit, MacroFab has been throwing a lot of smart peoples’ energy and time at this problem. I had a call today with 5 from the MacroFab team and they were really engaged once again. This has been a frustrating and difficult challenge for all of us and it’s great that we’re all on the same team trying to fix this thing!
They are pretty confident now that one component, the Ethernet PHY chip on the board, had a bunch of defective or somehow damaged product in circulation, and we may have received defective components on more than one occasion from different suppliers. 
The component in question is the RTL8201FI-VC-CG. It’s basically the physical interface between the electronic signals from the ethernet cable into the ESP32 microcontroller on the Alarm Panel Pro. Of course it has a lot to do with the Ethernet link quality of the board, so it makes total sense.
They looked closely at this chip back in January when we were investigating the batch 2401 problem. For most of last year I was buying these chips from LCSC, a Chinese components distributor. Macrofab has vendor relationships with Winsource, another Chinese distributor for these made-in-China ICs, so they ordered more of the RTL8201FI from Winsource to compare against those we already had. This test wasn’t successful and the boards with Winsource parts failed just as bad as boards with LCSC parts, so we kinda ruled that out as the root cause.
It’s gone full circle.
Batch 2403 was produced with about 80% parts from LCSC that I bought last year, and about 20% of parts that MacroFab sourced from apparently newer stock. The first article test boards that they built in advance of batch 2403 were produced with this 20% new stock, and they all worked.
There’s a correlation there! Some of the batch 2403 boards were working great, but most of them not. It seems that those that were built with the newer stock of the RealTek chip are working just fine. To prove this, MacroFab’s test engineers removed some chips from tested and known working boards, and transplanted them on boards that were failing – and they worked! 100% of the time!
It certainly took us a while to get here, but I’m hopeful now that all of batch 2403 and 2401 can be fully repaired by replacing this one component. That in itself is not an easy-task, but that’s what MacroFab is great at and they’re totally on board to do it. Right now we’re waiting on the new chips to come in from China, which may take a week, and then they’ll get started with the rework.
So far we’ve received 77 working Alarm Panel Pros, and all of those are going out to a couple of our reseller partners: M.nu in Sweeden and Smart Central Solutions in Australia, who we have long-overdue orders from December and early January.
Our direct-to-consumer orders are backordered to about January 15th.
We’ll be shipping first-in-first-out as soon as we get more boards in stock. I don’t think we’ll have new batch 2403 or 2401 boards for another week or so given the parts order and rework that needs to be done. I will of course update again when we have a clearer timeline.
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That’s great news, and it explains so many of the inconsistent errors that you’ve seen. What a relief to find out they can all hopefully be repaired and you won’t be at a major loss!
Quick update – MacroFab has received the replacements for the bad components and they just sent us 10 units to test. So far so good!
At this point it’s unclear how quickly they’ll be able to rework and replace the bad component on all of the boards, but my understanding is that they’ll be sending us partial shipments as they come off the line. I’ll continue to post updates here as we work through the backorder list.
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Hi Nate,
any news for the new boards?
thanks
Andrea
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Update on Alarm Panel Pro fulfillment
We’ve received about 20% of batch 2403 from the manufacturer that are working great and passing all of our functional tests, and we’ve fulfilled all backorders thru order number #43650 (orders placed before January 30th).
Macrofab is continuing to replace the affected part on the remaining boards, thoroughly test each one, and we’re seeing much better results but unfortunately not all of them are passing after the repair. We’re continuing to deep-dive into some design aspects of the board to try to identify a magic bullet.
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Hi @nate
Would you have any spare Pro boards from 2403 batch left, please?
Was thinking of experimenting or reflowing a new ethernet chip on to it… will think of a few ideas.
If not, would be useful to be used w WiFi board
Thanks
Hi. New user on here. Been watching this topic through since late last year. UK based and need to update current 10old wired honeywell alarm panel. The Pro board and everything about it seems ideal, with the obvious issue being, you dont have any !
I am trying to see what i can purchase on Amazon UK but availability is zero - i have a house + garage to cover so ideally i need 18 zones covered. 3 x 6 zone wifi only beasties ? Wifi signal can be bad and ideally want a wired option. Any advice or recommendations would be great.