Home Forums General Discussion Technical Questions New controller required but which one?

I'm on the board of an HOA. We have14 buildings- 1 elevator per bldg. , 14 hydro elevators 3 floors- 6 Mowrey 2005, 7 MCE HMC1000 (all originally installed with the initial condo build of around 2005) and one recently installed Pixel..

Recently one of our Mowery's have quit. The Mowrey controller boards all have the IC part numbers completely ground off.. I sent in a controller board to a reliable repair shop and they told me that the Car Eeprom has been totally wiped clean most likely that the Mowrey software wipes it clean after a number of times that the car has been used. We no longer use Mowrey as a maintenance contractor due to questionable business practices. so we can't replace the eeprom since it is proprietary. Eventually we would like to get rid of all of the Mowery equipment.

My current maintenance contractor suggest replacing the control system with Smartrise, but a read on this forum, that they seem to be stripping their tech people and provide poor tech support. The only other choice seems to be MCE.

Anyone have suggestions as to which we should go with. (Smartsrid, MCE or even alpha). We want the least amount of downtime since are buildings are full of old retired people

You are correct on your skepticism of smartrise.

If you want the best reliability, longevity, and completely non proprietary support, I would recommend either the MCE motion 2000 controller or a Virginia controls MH-3000 controller.

I've heard good things about alpha but to me they just got started and its never a guarantee when companies are starting out. VA controls and MCE are the top of the market for high reliability hydro applications and have been around for decades.

Alpha is a new company however not new experience. When he left smartrise, he took they’re top techs with them.

Elevator controls pixel

Like other people also mentioned there are many reasons why you should not consider Smartrise.
Firstly, all their engineering and support has been moved to a company called Baytech (or something similar), which is based in Lebanon.
The issue is that Baytech has been a computer software company in Lebanon and may not have the same level of expertise in elevators, which has caused many problems.

Secondly, the quality of Smartrise's hardware and software is terrible, especially their new C4 controller. Imagine what happens when you combine low-quality hardware and software with poor tech support in Lebanon!

Lastly, many people including myself believe Smartrise controller is not fully compliant with safety standards and codes. This is a major concern when it comes to elevator safety and should not be overlooked. It's best to look for other elevator solutions that prioritize safety and reliability. I beleive both Pixel and MCE are good options.

One type I would consider avoiding is PLC (i.e. Mid-American). The only exception would be JRT, which is pretty good. The reason for this is because PLC is more like a solid-state remake of a relay controller. There's more wiring and many of the components are made for general use and not specifically for elevators and can be rendered obsolete sooner. They also don't dispatch well in large groups. They tend to chase after each other. The reason JRT is OK is because it uses a combo of both conventional and PLC processing.

Another good controller to consider is eHydro from GAL. To me the GAsseem to be similar to CEC Swift. You could also consider a Vertical Express ICON-32. It's similar to TAC-32.

Honestly, we have used MCE 2000 but dealing with MCE has become a night mare, we have been using Alpha for the last year and a half ! love the team and product easy to work with , and no issues what so ever. I think we have installed more than 50 in the past year or so, and we are happy with them, cant wait for the traction product to come out. Never a big fan of smartrisre horrible support and its falling apart cant get anyone to call me back !! I hear they are up for sale , and no one wants to buy them, I really think Alpha will be the future for the hydro market , will see how the traction fans out.

Smartrise blows big time. I like the MCE-2000 series but I have seen a couple of the VA controls I liked as well.

Smartrise blows big time. I like the MCE-2000 series but I have seen a couple of the VA controls I liked as well.

I am working with an HOA with nearly same criteria but older General controllers and my suggestions were Virginia mh3000, Alpha, or MCE. Those HMC1000's are a solid controller. I see lots of them and they have little to no issues. Two alphas just hit the ground in 3-4 weeks from time of order (impressive turnover).
Maybe someone else here could confirm but Im not sure if the HMC1000 has DLM programming.

If you already have 1 Pixel controller I don’t see any reason not to go with that. I don’t have a lot of experience with them but that’s because the ones we have haven’t needed much troubleshooting. EC’s tech support is good and much more responsive than MCE these days. There’s a lot of benefit to having the same controller and with that many cars it would make a lot of sense to keep 1 of everything on site to minimize down time.

I would have to disagree on the plc based controllers. How much experience do you have working on them? The positive thing about them is that your not stuck with buying parts from the original manufacturer as your are with gal/sr/mce ect... Just about anybody can fix them if you have the ladder program and can make changes as needed.

I agree completely, if it's a simplex and you don't need dispatching, as good as the new microprocessor based controls are you can't beat the reliability of a PLC based car. There's a reason the harshest environments use PLC based cars. I've worked on them in everything from Aluminum foundries to outdoor rack and pinion cars being rained and snowed on in negative dergee temperatures. Places I just can't see any microprocessor based serial link controller holding up well for a long time.

I also like the new MCE motion 2000 more than the older hmc1000. It's a similar upgrade that the tac 32 was from the tac 20. They went to triacs to replace high failure relays and everything has alot more redundancy now. Case in point is if a up slowdown limit sticks and caused a MLT on a 1000 you get there and it's not stuck and have to reconstruct what happened to figure it out, the motion 2000 that limits input is monitored and throws a fault for that specifically. They did a good job identifying the weak points on the hmc1000 and addressing them

Them MCE HMC 1000 are great controllers. If you wanted to upgrade the elevators over time, I would save those for last (or honestly just keep them as they are that good). DO NOT GET SMARTRISE!!! That would be the worst thing you could do. I would do MCE OR ESI (Elevator systems Inc) both are great. We prefer ESI because the tech support (when needed rarely) is quick to call back unlike SMARTRISE who will take hours or sometimes a day to call back. I would stay away from anything proprietary AKA the big 3..

I agree completely on never installing something from the big 4. There's a reason equipment is always modded away from their equipment. I always see big 4 equipment being modded to any of the non proprietary equipment. I never see a job that was a canton or similar that was modded to a Tac20 or Ecospace controller.

I once heard from a high up guy at a large independent company who only installed Vertical express, that it was normal for a couple boards to go bad in the first year on all of them and after that the "bugs were worked out". Blew my mind he's sitting there defeding the inexcusable lack of reliability. My thought process was I would've put up with that for 6 months and never installed another. I'm used to installing non proprietary equipment that darn near simply doesn't have breakdowns due to the controller.