Conductor acts up with FM transmitter

[sebjsan]

Well..... It seems i wont be able to use the conductor. The only channels it works with is the lower channels which are not available in my area. The lowest i can go is 87.5 in my car and fm stereos and the control panel wont work on anything lower than 78.0 FM. at least this is how my conductor is currently operating. Hopefully i am missing something.

[tbone321]

It sounds like you have a bad transmitter.  It seems to be feeding back thru the hookup cable.  If you have something that you cn put between them such as a stereo with tape input and output jacks, that should isolate the transmitter from the Conductor and would show if that's the problem.

[chrisatpsu]

what about a ground loop isolator?

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[tbone321]

If it were a ground loop condition, I don't think that changing the tranmitt frequency would have much effect.  You need a one way connection that can prevent the transmitter from feeding anything back to confirm whether that is the issue or not.  If that works, then the transmitter needs to be looked at to find the problem.

[Mickpat]

Just guessing, but do you have one of these on the FM transmitter power cord? 

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I thought I read something about adding one of these to the audio line too, but not sure.

[chrisatpsu]

a ferret might actually work, they eliminate EM interference in a line carrying signal.

[Mickpat]

One more thought, did you twist the audio wires coming from the conductor?  Twist them together tightly to help with noise. 

I didn't do this on mine, but should.

[tbone321]

The issue seems to be more than just interferece, at least as far as a ferret can eliminate.  It looks more like a heavy load at higher frequencies causing the Conductor to shut down.  Most people have a stereo or even a boom box that has a AUX and TAPE OUT jacks which can provide the perfect isolation needed to test and debug the system and ac tas a bandaid to get it working if the transmitter is the issue for this seasons light show. 

[sebjsan]

Just got an old boom box from the inlaws. How can I set it up to debug the issue.

[tbone321]

You have to see if it has any aux inputs and tape outputs.  Not all boom boxes have these but some of the bigger ones do.  Oherwise, do you hav a stereo receiver?

[sebjsan]

Too old of a boom box doesn't have the outputs . Don't own a stereo receiver.

[zwiller]

Long live analog!   

Although I have not built my conductor yet I have a tape deck with old school inputs and outputs.  I also have the same transmitter of Sebastian and similar target frequency (99.5).  I was not really planning on using the conductor this year but I could try and help debug.  If this helps, how does the conductor need to be redesigned or fixed? 

Sebastian, you give up on the LSP scheduler?  I planned to use it at least until I have time to understand the conductor.   

[sebjsan]

I'm going to try lsp scheduler tonight. Just have to fight my wife for her laptop to run the show until I get this fixed.

Right now I just put the one sequence on loop.

[tbone321]

The issue is not with the Conductor but appears to be with the transmitter.  I don't know if it's that make / model of transmitter or his particular transmitter has an issue.  The idea was to feed the music output of the conductor into the aux inputs of a stereo unit and use the tape out to feed the transmitter.  This would isolate the Conductor output from the transmitter input.  If the Conductor works in this situation, then there is an issue with the transmitter and if not, then that Conductor has issues.  The second step would be to get another transmitter of the same type an see what it does.

[rm357]

I think you might need to ground the transmitter. To test this, wrap a piece of wire around the collar of the BNC connector of the antenna (the center pin is connected to the antenna, the shield/collar should be connected to ground inside the transmitter) so that it makes good electrical contact and attach a small metal stake (you can use a large screwdriver for testing) to the other end of the wire and stick the stake in the ground - yup vertical in the dirt. Then fire everything up and see if it works.

If that fixes it, it would be better to have a bigger stake - like 12 to 18 inches. For just Christmas, I think the industry standard 4 foot copper grounding rod would be a little excessive...