today we're going to take a look at Metrel's three-phase active switch the a1507
well did a role reversal today so I've had to learn some new software so Gary can have an
easy life when it comes to doing the insulation test on this EV rig that we built behind us now
obviously this is a three-phase system so normally you'd have yeah lots of swapping
of probes gary wouldn't you yeah ten tests to do the installation resistance test if you're not
linking live conductors together and doing it to the protective conductor so there's ten tests to
be carried out and we believe this three-phase active switch will make electrician's life
easier and we know we like that on the channel don't we certainly do and so quite uh easy it's uh
it is what it says it's an active switch that does the switching between the probes
and links paired up to this metrel mi 3155 right so this is not a kit for the uh should we say the
occasional tester but if you're someone who does a lot of test sequences particularly in three-phase
installations then yeah this is a great bit of kick so we're going to give you a little demo
right um you have to have a look at the switch first can do yeah so you you
hold that i'll bring the hang cam in is that all right we do it that way around yeah okay so we've
got the ability to put the uh five probes in there throw our three lines neutral and our protective
conductor that's it and we've got the lead here that goes into the top of the uh material tester
as well yeah yes so this is where you'd normally have your possibly three or four leads at the
top of your uh tester for single phase work right okay um the box itself is battery powered
and rechargeable through this port here just connect little external power supply to that all
right okay uh the communication between the two devices to do the relay switching is via bluetooth
right so that means communicates between the actual tester and here via bluetooth yep so
there's no power switch on this right it switches on when it detects the bluetooth signal from
the device and obviously powers down when it no longer has that so you don't have to worry about
batteries running down things like that right okay that's good and we built our own test is
what we did didn't we so we come up with this 10 test sequence and added it actually into the
matrol tester yeah so the great thing about the material testers if you haven't seen them before
we featured the mi 3152 yeah and we took we took it through a whole test sequence for an ev charger
and that's built in yeah but i thought obviously today for our rig we just want to focus on the
insulation test because some people don't believe this flat cable system we installed we actually
screwed through these boxes into the conductors i think wow that's this is a whole new concept so
we're just gonna obviously as we go through this explanation you'll learn if this is it gets that
insulation test that were that the levels that we'd expect yeah so we were asked when we as
they went in and screwed in check out their video and we've seen it they they penetrate through the
outside pvc and into the conductor through that insulation people are all that that could cause a
problem well we'll see when station resistant test it won't we that's it so what i had to do then was
obviously what i hadn't done before is metre i'll have a powerful software package that goes with
the tester so it allows you to upload tests and put them into reports but it also allows you to
build your own test sequences and download them into the tester for when you get to site so if you
wanted to do an installation in a particular order yeah and that we thought well let's have a let's
try this so this is the first time we've actually used it so there was a learning curve for me if
you've used this software and got some top tips then yeah share it with us so what we've got on
screen there gary is the three phase installation test we're going to look at in a little while and
there's all our test sequences okay and you built those yourself built those ourselves so what you
do is drag and drop them from this menu here into your test sequence right okay and what i did i'm
just going to correct one of them because i did make a little error so these what you have your
test you can set your test parameters and then what happens after the test right so
what i want to do is change this so at the end of each test it automatically goes to the next phase
regardless of whether i've got a pass or fail okay so you can stop it after a failed part of the
test you want or you stop it after two or three manually stop if you didn't want to progress yeah
so it doesn't carry on so so that's good so i've built the test and now we've got to transfer that
to the tester itself to the 3155 and it's dead easy you just take it always seems to be
when you're doing it i always get the difficulty older and older and i had a lot of um yeah
it's a while since i've used the windows machine so that was the first uh the first challenge and
it's a new bit of software you're learning but it is actually pretty easy when you do it i think you
can also put in some manual inspection processes in the test as well right okay so say you might
want to in this installation behind us you might want to make sure you remove the charge berries
so let's just check them so if we pull this one forward you're telling me that the charge bearing
will not be in here then is what you're saying yeah and there you can see we've already taken the
chargeberry out okay we won't be wanting to pass the 500 volts for the insulation resistance test
through that so of course you could have a stage that says before you start the test could you have
confirmable load to remember i think you can yeah i mean i'm just learning this software
but i think that facilities built in there there's certainly some pre-programmed ones in there for if
you're doing machine work and things like that so yeah and again again if you've been familiar with
this and you want to leave comments to help the community leave them in there for us and
maybe even answer some of the questions as little troubleshooters for us we'd love that yeah right
okay here we go so first job i'm going to upload our new test into our meter so again you just plug
in the usb connector let's have a look on to the top usb connector into oh there yep that we're
gonna we've got a bleep and then again just go to our software i'm just gonna upload so let's have
a look i'm just gonna click on the upload on the menu there and that will put that in will it so i
want to save hold on save i've saved it first and then it's just going to say start okay upload so
it's doing things on there and that's transferring that information onto the tester yeah that's it
does this do anything when it comes across so then when we go to our auto sequence test here
here's the efix here's a special file we built with our tests in there lovely and that's the
three phase installation test we're going to carry out okay right so that's it so i'm finished with
the laptop now i can also disconnect the lead and then there's the tricky bit connecting the
active switch to there okay i see this tricky bit then yeah okay so here's the the port at the top
okay and just push it in as we would any other ones and then we're obviously going
to put our probe leads into there yeah so i might as well bring them in there we've got
yeah so it comes with a five lead set as well and they're all identified i think from
previous memory yep so you've got them identified correctly yep
we've got our rail one to so the beauty of this enemies we're gonna probe onto our
five connections in our db or in our case in our isolating switch and then we're gonna hold those
probes into position aren't we the five probes okay you might crocodile clip some on but you
can hold them in position and it's just going to flick itself through all 10 insulation resistance
tests without moving yeah it's just going to step through the test should we see that next
so our three-phase active switch will power up and detect the bluetooth connection and your green
led is on we're ready to go so i'm going to probe into our panel here normally this would probably
be a three-phase distribution board we'd have a crocodile clip on the protective conductor in
the neutral meaning only three probes for us here i'm gonna obviously probe into all five
at the same time and hold them in position like so i think we're now ready for the test
okay so i'm going to select the auto test sequence i'll set that efix folder that's
got our custom tests that we've uploaded to the instrument so it's again just case of selecting
that and then pressing the play button to start the start the test cycle there we go
so what's going to happen now is the active switch is going to start the test cycle and then at each
stage once it's complete the test change the connections in the relay and then start the
next test we can hear that as well can you can hear it changing over and i think if you look on
the screen you can also see the ones we're testing between so it's currently between l3 and neutral
now we're between l1 and protective earth so it'll do all 10 insulation resistance tests
obviously, you've got one hand obviously connecting the leads and the machine is just working its
way through those sequences can we retrieve the results afterwards gordon yes obviously complete
we can obviously upload them back back up to a laptop say if you wanted to produce a report um
and obviously once this test finish we'll get a we'll get an overview of all the tests we've done
interesting thing you can do is obviously we've set this up to automatically go to the next test
after the previous test you can do that manually obviously that's not not going to save you much
time or you can if there was a test fail you could choose to stop the whole cycle at that
point all right okay so i'm sure people are saying well there's two people doing this we're actually
doing it with two people so obviously, we can keep ourselves out the way of the camera so i
could have reached round and obviously that would have blocked the screen in order to carry out
these tests so we're nearly there so is that it's finished yeah so there's our test results after we
say all the 10 tests and then we can just scroll down them just to see that everything was was okay
should you've clipped on and vanished to get a coffee gary just come back and inspect the results
all right okay so thanks for that so just take these off and i'll go and get that coffee
so to answer that question that was posed when we installed this in the first place when we have
that screw that penetrates through the insulation and makes a connection with the conductors surely
that's going to make a failure on the insulation resistance well it doesn't we've done all ten
tests and they all passed yeah did that kit make your life easier again absolutely i can see myself
sitting in front of a three-phase distribution board clip on the neutral bar clip on the earth
bar three probes into my three-phase breaker set it off do all 10 tests in one move to the next one
yeah and i'd love to see that because i could sit sit building those tests for gary in this watcher
pack him off for a day do those tests and then he comes back and download the hopefully satisfactory
test results and again that just shows you know a powerful package here uh i guess we can look
at more of the software features in some future videos but what a powerful package the software
the three phase active switch and the metrel 3155 yeah we do and we love products here on the efix
that save electrician's time and i believe the three-phase active switch will save you time and
make your life easier however as always we're interested in your comments have you been using
the active switch is there a gem of a test you want us maybe to have a look at on the channel
or you've done and you can help people in the community by answering the questions
that would be really helpful to us we will also get back to as many comments as we can