GE RR7 remote control panel wiring

Status
Not open for further replies.

Fred B

Senior Member
Location
Upstate, NY
Occupation
Electrician
Have a wireing nightmare that might even rival a telecom wireman's splice box. Have an old (about 1970's) GE Remote Control Panel that has 30 RR7 relays, no wire labeling, line voltage side pretty straight forward has it's own issues but not my question. Question is it has not just the momentary contact switches (which is No prob) but the 2 pairs of rotary dials with numbered dials, fed thru from the master Bedroom, again no marking labels, all seeming to tie in to multiple swtches, new homeowner that bought the home wants to eliminate those rotary from the bedroom as it is "in the way of where they want their bed".
1. what was the purpose of the rotary? I'm assuming was somehow to control all lighting selectively from that location.
2. Can that be simply (using term loosly) disconnected from system leaving the individual contact switches to control? Or is there additional consideration that my initial assumption didn't consider?
 

James L

Senior Member
Location
Kansas Cty, Mo, USA
Occupation
Electrician
I'm not familiar with any rotary dials. Can you take a pic of them? What's the model number?

You said they seemingly tie into multiple switches. 🤔 are they tying into the relays for outside lights? I've seen bedroom master switches to turn on and off flood lights

Can you move them?
 

Fred B

Senior Member
Location
Upstate, NY
Occupation
Electrician
I'm not familiar with any rotary dials. Can you take a pic of them? What's the model number?

You said they seemingly tie into multiple switches. 🤔 are they tying into the relays for outside lights? I've seen bedroom master switches to turn on and off flood lights

Can you move them?
2 sets rotary dials #rd 1-12 one dial on each pair say "off" and one on each pair say "on" with same numbering.
These relays control all the lighting. Am tracing and each # pair is going back to a single relay, then additional jump going to contactor switch.
They move but system down right now so not able to confirm operation
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Sounds like maybe a master controller that you can select any of 12 loads to actuate? Is there a "selector" and an additional push button to operate what ever circuit was selected?

If you have pairs marked off and other pairs marked on - you likely have relays with on and off input leads instead of just two wire impulse type relays, so one rotary dial is used to select any one of the twelve to turn on and the other dial is used to select any one of the twelve to turn off.

How easy to remove depends on how conductors are routed. functionally these should be parallel to the individual room switches but if everything would come back to these master switches you can't just eliminate, would at least need to splice somehow to feed on through whatever got removed.
 

James L

Senior Member
Location
Kansas Cty, Mo, USA
Occupation
Electrician
Might be helpful thread. Look at post #6 @junkhound mentioned rotary switches. Maybe some help there

 

gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Occupation
EE
201119-1040 EST

Fred B:

You need a basic understanding of the GE RR system.

The switch itself is a bi-stable snap blade. This switch stays in which ever state it was last set without requiring any power to sustain it in that state. To select one of these two states there are two solenoids, a set to "on" coil, and a set to "off"coil. Thus, there are three control wires to a relay. One wire is common to both coils. The other two wires are the other ends of the two coils. Only a short pulse of energy to a coil is required to change the relay state. This is not a toggling relay, and thus multiple pulses to the same coil makes no further change in the relay state. There were some low voltage relay systems that used a single coil and a stepping switch, but not the GE system.

The GE RR relays were not designed for a sustained input to a coil. This could cause a coil burnout.

The GE RR relay could be actuated by either an AC or DC pulse of energy. The relays are quite quiet when switched by DC, just a slight click.

Control of the relays is done with a SPDT spring return to center and open in the center position switch. Thus, any number of switches can be wired in parallel to control a single relay. This is a wired OR logic circuit.

I don't understand your rotary switch input. It is an incomplete description. Because of the logic of the control side of the RR system you should be able to remove any one or more control switches from a circuit without any effect on other circuits so long as you do not open some of the paths to other switches.

I do have some GE RR control switches with a single control switch, and an associated single 9 position rotary selector. This combination allows control of 1 of up to 9 different RR relays by the one control switch, but of only one relay at a time.

.
 

Fred B

Senior Member
Location
Upstate, NY
Occupation
Electrician
Thanks Gar3 for your added description, the rotary dial appears to have 12 indent contact points that can be selected then the rotary pushed to power. 1 side is off one switch is on. 2 sets that will control a total of 24 relays.
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
The RR system control switches are, as gar described, able to be connected in parallel for an essentially unlimited number of single two position momentary switches per circuit. When they are driven by a DC actuation source it is also possible to group-activate relays by putting diodes in series with each control circuit switch.
This allows switch a to activate circuit A,b for B, c for C, etc and to also have for example, a Group 1 switch g1 that activates A and B and a master, m, which activates A, B and C simultaneously.
Even when you do not use DC and grouping, you can use a rotary switch and one momentary switch to select any single circuit (say one out of A-L) The second rotary switch would have the remaining (up to 12 max) additional circuits.
If you carefully insulate and store rhe wire ends, there is no reason, other than loss of function, not to remove the master switch group and use only the individual circuit switches.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Thanks Gar3 for your added description, the rotary dial appears to have 12 indent contact points that can be selected then the rotary pushed to power. 1 side is off one switch is on. 2 sets that will control a total of 24 relays.
Sounded to me like you have two those rotary switches and can control 12 "on" with one switch and 12 "off" with the other. But yes between the two a master control station for probably the whole house. Can probably be eliminated, but must make sure you don't interrupt wires to other switches in the process depending on how cables are routed in the premises.
 

Fred B

Senior Member
Location
Upstate, NY
Occupation
Electrician
Sounded to me like you have two those rotary switches and can control 12 "on" with one switch and 12 "off" with the other. But yes between the two a master control station for probably the whole house. Can probably be eliminated, but must make sure you don't interrupt wires to other switches in the process depending on how cables are routed in the premises.
All wireing to the master control are in conduit run back to remote control panel and doubled on terminal screws with lines that then run out to individual switches, so hopefully can remove the master control. The only thing I came across while tracing the wires that was puzzling was I had system powered down and continuity tracing each wire from master back to relay panel and had 4 leads that traced as if it connected to all leads, this was not the white or blue leads that connect to ground or the power bus that the relay blue line connects to, so not sure if master is faulty. Not all relays tied to the master control some go directly to individual switches without tie to master, 26 out 28 relays utilized and only 18 go to master as well.
 

junkhound

Senior Member
Location
Renton, WA
Occupation
EE, power electronics specialty
For a really simple fix, just remover from wall, shove thru the hole and stash inside the wall add cover board or drywall repair.

As already explained, unless there ia a transformer involved, you can simply cut and cap each wire.

Be glad the previous HO was not me or you would also find about 200 diodes tying various compinations of wires together and all bussed onto a couple of 50 pair old telephone cables to be able to control about anything anywhere from anywhere - built in the old days prior to cat 5/internet/wifi.
 

Dick Anderson

New User
Location
Chamblee GA
Occupation
retired
I have one of these systems in my house (built in 1962). One switch is to turn ON any of 15 lights (in my case) & the other is to turn any of them OFF.
You can also turn them ALL On or Off by simply pressing either switch and rotating it past all the numbers.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top