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Clipsal Colour Touch Screen Replacement or Repair Advice

Clipsal C-Bus Colour Touch Screen - EOL

- Repair or Replacement Advice to clients

The venerable, reliable and long lived 6.4 inch Clipsal Colour Touchscreen series (5080CTC, 5080CTC2 & 5080CTC3 models) has reached end of life (EOL) and been discontinued by Clipsal in 2019. New units are no longer available to purchase.

Nous House provides this advice to home owners with several options you have to either replace or repair your faulty Colour Touch Screen noting your choice will likely depend on your situation, preferences and budget.

If your 5080CTC unit is completely dead, you may still have the option of transferring the logic, scenes and schedules of your Colour Touch screen project into either a Clipsal Wiser 2 Home Automation controller or a Windows PC running Homegate or Schedule Plus software if the project is recoverable from the old screen hardware. A touch screen repair assesssment is the best first plan of attack in this situation.

Replace your Colour Touch Screen - some options

1. A 'New Build' Touch Screen Installation using the latest hardware

A new build installation is exactly the same as we would be installing for this purpose in a new home today.

For new touch screen installation, Nous House recommends the Clipsal 5500SHAC Smart Home Automation Controller (fondly called the SHAC) combined with either the Clipsal 5500ETP10 Ethernet Touch Panel as the user wall mounted display or alternatively an Apple iPad or Apple iPad Mini in a wallmount, or an Android based tablet.

The Clipsal SHAC being a new generation of Clipsal automation controller moves away from the historical C-Bus tools and Pascal logic engine that all installers and many clients are familiar with. This option requires a complete from scratch recreation of your C-Bus project menus, schedules and scenes with it's more modern though significantly different programming interface. The labour cost of a multi-page project recreation can easily equal the cost of the hardware alone so though this is the most forward facing option for your C-Bus Smart home, it is also probably the most costly. Nous House can provide this service to you on a quoted basis.

2. A Wiser2 Smartphone GUI operated replacement

The Clipsal Wiser 2 is a reliable and advanced home automation controller that has been around for several years that gives you control of your home from the palm of your hand through a stylish and intuitive to use home control app interface on either your smartphone or a tablet (iPhone, iPad or Android).

Multiple users on different phones can control the home allowing simultaneously local and remote smartphone control for individual owners and at the same time a wall mounted tablet to replace the CTC. Conveniently, a wall mounted iPad or other tablet can cover the hole left on the wall by your removed Colour Touch Screen.

A Wiser 2 project will need to be created that efficently replaces your Colour Touch Screen design configuration. It has a widget based menu that separates controls by rooms or areas (eg. Lounge, Outside, Entry etc.) or by function (eg. Lights, Blinds, Aircon, Heating, Scenes, House Tools etc.). The look and feel of the iPhone GUI is easy on the eyes and is highly rated by our clients for design and functionality.

3. A Windows PC with a Touch Screen as replacement

It is noted that your original Colour touch screen was actually a specifically engineered Windows Panel PC running Clipsal's Homegate C-Bus software, so moving Homegate on to a larger screen is not a big issue or change and can actually import your existing previously created project, logic, schedules and scenes.

In the end, this option will most likely also give you a touch screen with a much bigger usable area on your wall. To use this extra screen geometry to your advantage is obviously a nicety of this option, but will incur additional design and programming costs if you want to do that.

Many clients have replaced Colour Touch Screens with larger format Windows touch screen PCs such as the Microsoft Surface, Lenova Yoga, HP Envy, HP Spectre or Kiosk, POS and panel PCs. Transfer of an existing un-modified project to a larger Windows PC will only incur a few hours of configuration programming so is a very cost effective option.

Repair your Colour Touch Screen

If your colour touch screen has failed and your preference is to maintain it, repair is still an option for you.

Nous House can perform a service assessment of your faulty unit in our workshop - A $145 service fee is charged upfront for the pull down,  assessment, reassembly and tracked return of your screen. This fee is incorporated as a pre-payment of any subsequent repair costs you agree to. The service fee is refunded back to you if the screen is relinquished for our use as spare parts if it is assessed as being un-economical to repair.

If repair is possible we shall quote you the expected price of repair, and if accepted will either return the unit to Clipsal to be repaired or perform the repair in house as guided by the fault and required parts. Repair cost most usually ranges between $450 & $1,400 depending on the fault.

A fairly common age based condition of the CTC screen is that if you press a screen icon, it beeps and it changes the icon state to show on, but without the item actually turning on on via your C-Bus eg. the light in the room. The fix to this issues is often toward the lowest end of repair cost guideline.

If your unit is not repairable, a refurbised and warranted replacement unit will then be quoted instead for your consideration. It can often be programmed with your original project if it can be retrieved from the memory card of your failed touch screen without the need for a local installer to come onsite. Other than the replacement unit cost, this is an economical option as not additional programming or onsite is usually required.

If you would like to have a Colour Touch Screen Service Assessment, please choose to purchase using this link. Forwarding Details for your screen to our office will be sent to you on placing and paying for your online service order.

Further Information

Here are links to the old product pages for the 5080CTC2 & 5080CTC3 with their specifications, brochures and manuals that remain provided on our website purely for informational purposes.