The pedestal is fine and the rig is dead

Everything in the rig is off. The pedestal monitor is sitting there reporting a perfectly healthy 120 volts, no fault, no complaint. The campground has done nothing wrong and neither has your surge protector, and the coach behind them is completely dark.

That combination is worth recognizing on sight, because it tells you where to walk. A pedestal problem sends you to the office. This one sends you to your own panel, and the walk is shorter.

Most of what people mean by “a breaker tripped” is covered elsewhere in the cookbook — the pedestal going dead, the EMS disconnecting deliberately, the air conditioner and the converter each losing their own circuit. This article is the part none of those cover: what happens between the pedestal and the appliance.

The three readings that place the break

A Power Watchdog gives you three numbers every 30 seconds, and it is the combination of all three — not any one — that says which side of it the problem is on.

a. Voltage says whether the post is alive

Normal voltage means the pedestal is delivering. That is the reading that exonerates the campground, and it is the one that turns you around and points you at your own panel.

The opposite is not as clean. A dead pedestal does not report zero — the Watchdog runs off the line it measures, so it stops answering altogether, and that is the outage article. There is a nastier case that looks identical: on a 30 amp rig an open neutral leaves the unit with no return path, so it goes dark exactly the same way. Never treat a Watchdog that has gone quiet as automatically benign, and read what a miswired pedestal does before you go poking at one.

b. The error code says whether the EMS chose this

Zero means the unit is passing power and is happy about it. Anything else means it opened deliberately, and that is a decision rather than a failure — the reason is in the code, which we show as the number the unit reports. An error code is the difference between “something broke” and “your protection worked”, and it is the single fastest way to stop diagnosing the wrong thing.

c. Current says how much of the rig is still connected

This is the one that separates a main from a branch. With the post live and the EMS passing power, current near zero means nothing at all downstream is drawing — the whole coach is disconnected, which puts it at the rig’s main breaker, the transfer switch or the inlet. Current that has dropped but is clearly not zero means the panel is still energised and only part of it has gone.

The DC side, which finishes the sentence

One more reading turns those three into a diagnosis, and most people already have it. If the converter is still charging, the panel is energised and whatever tripped did not take the converter with it. If the bank has fallen off charge to resting voltage while the post is still live, the converter has lost its supply — which on a rig where everything else is dark means the main, and on a rig where everything else is fine means the converter’s own breaker.

A SmartShunt at 60 seconds gives you the sign, which is the clearest version. A Lancol at 120 gives you voltage only — enough to see the bank drop off float, not enough to say which way it is going. And if the coach came with a Bluetooth SeeLevel panel, there is a voltage sitting in among the tank numbers that almost nobody thinks to look at.

The combinations

Read the first three together and the answer is usually immediate. This is the cookbook pattern at its most mechanical.

• Voltage normal, error code zero, current near zero, bank fallen off charge — the whole rig is disconnected downstream of the monitor. Your main breaker, the transfer switch, or the inlet. Walk to your own panel.
• Voltage normal, error code zero, current down but not zero, bank still charging — a single branch. The panel is live and one circuit is gone; which one is the next section’s problem.
• Voltage normal, error code non-zero, current near zero — not a breaker at all. The EMS opened on purpose and the code says why.
• Watchdog stops answering entirely, and the bank starts discharging — the pedestal side is genuinely dead. That is the outage article, and the same pair is its first combination.
• Watchdog stops answering and the bank is still charging — Bluetooth range, not a trip. The most common false alarm in this whole family.
• Voltage normal and the hub itself goes offline in the same minute — the hub’s own outlet lost its circuit, which is branch evidence and simultaneously destroys your ability to see anything else. Move it to 12 volts.

Working out which branch

Once the total current says one circuit has gone, the only way to name it is to ask each appliance you have a sensor on. That is not a limitation of the alerts so much as of physics: a single number at the inlet cannot tell you which of eight circuits is missing from it.

So it is the consequence sensors that answer, each in its own article. A temperature sensor or a probe on the fridge shelf climbing with the door reading closed is the fridge circuit. A start count that never moved across a hot afternoon is the air conditioner’s. A bank sitting at resting voltage in daylight with the post live is the converter’s. The pattern is always the same: the Watchdog exonerates everything upstream, and one appliance’s own sensor convicts the circuit it sits on.

What none of this tells you

Why it tripped. A breaker that has done its job and a breaker that is tired and dropping out at half its rating look exactly alike from every reading here, and the second one is the reason a breaker that trips twice deserves an electrician rather than a third reset.

On a 50 amp rig, which leg. Those units report each leg as a separate frame and our decode was confirmed on a single-line 30 amp unit, so a per-leg answer is one we have not earned. Use the unit’s own display for that until we have. And nothing here resets anything: we read the Power Watchdog and never write to it, because it gates your shore power and it is not ours to command.

What to do about it

You do not need a new alert for this. The thresholds are already set if you have followed the rest of the cookbook — a pedestal monitor and any voltage source — and what this article adds is the habit of reading them in order: is the post alive, did the EMS choose this, how much of the rig is still drawing.

Three questions, one screen, about fifteen seconds. And the value is entirely in where it sends you: to the campground office, to your own panel, or to the one appliance whose sensor is telling a different story from all the others.

Where to get one

The pedestal monitor is the only thing here bought for this job, and it is bought for protecting the rig rather than for diagnosing it — the diagnosis is a side effect of owning one. The compatibility database has what it broadcasts.