Hey everyone! Spent a lot of time searching through the forums and nothing I've come across yet seems to fit my problem.
I build 2 LE. Bought the parts myself, no coop. Everything worked great. PICs flashed properly and everything seemed to be fine until I hooked it up to my DMX controller.
Here's the issue. Both units boot up fine. I see Lynx Express 60hz scroll on the digits. No slow scrolling. All buttons work fine. I go to the test mode and the test mode works perfectly. All channel LED's light up, and afterwards I have LED's 2 and 4 on (ZC and DONE).
Now when I plug in my DMX cable, which in my case is an adapter for Enttec Pro to CAT5. <side note> I'm not using a Enttec Pro. I'm using a professional DMX console as I'm using these LE's in a stage environment so DMX timing should be perfect if not better than the Enttec Pro. This console costs $24k so I'm fairly certain it's not the console </side note>
Here's what happens. I plug in LE, it boots up fine. 3.3V and 5v LED's on. I plug in cat5 cable and the Data Link flickers and appears dim. I do have my wireless jumper installed (jumper on = no wireless, off = wireless I'm not using wireless, so jumper is on). This exact same thing happens on both boards. If the terminate jumper is on, data link LED doesn't come on at all. Terminate off, I get the flicker.
To make matters a little more confusing... When I plug in a cat5 cable to the DMX out1 of the board the Data link goes out. When I plug it into DMX out2 it flickers but gets brighter.
At first I figured it was the rs-485 chips. It might be but both boards are doing the same thing so I can't switch them out with known working ones.
I'm going to try making a new XLR to cat5 cable now and see if that fixes anything, but I've already tried with 2 different adapters, and on 2 different consoles.
Next is the PIC. I'll try reflashing when I get home if you guys think that's the problem.
I've checked solder joints and everything seems fine. Chips all installed in the correct orientation, seated properly, etc.
This wouldn't be so confusing if both boards weren't doing the exact same thing.
Any ideas?
-Tyler Herron