SSC V3 mod

[jnealand]

I have just completed doing the mod on 26 V1 and V2 SSCs and thought I would pass this info on since I have not seen / could not find it anywhere.

I used a 330ohm resistor.  I used the Radio Shack Desoldering iron to get the initial solder off the pins and then used soldering braid to clean up the rest of the solder.  Some folks have reported that they needed to add some flux to get the braid to work well although I never had to do that.

I used a sharp box cutter to cut the trace and I wanted to make sure it was cut.  I found that if I put an ohm meter on the top hole for the resistor and touched the second pin on the pic nearest to the resistor that I would see a short or in my case a noise from my meter.  If the trace was cut well then I would not see a short or hear the little buzz noise from the meter.

I used 26 ga phone wire.  After some trial and error I found the length of the wire to be a hair (1/32) less than 2".   I trimmed a 1/16 end off the wire and tinned each end.  I bent one end of the wire in a short 45 deg and soldered that end to the pin 15 of the PIC.  The other end of the wire then came right to the other solder location.  By pre-tinning the ends the wire will attach very quickly.

I have one SSC that is dedicated as a test SSC.  When I put the new test hex on that unit and hooked it up I got very different results than the previous test hex.  I have not been able to find any reference as to what to expect on this new test so I am recording it here.  The old test hex cycles as red, green, blue, white continuously as long as the program pins are not jumpered together.  If you put the jumper on the program pins the lights are supposed to be all white and stay that way.  With the V3 test hex the lights start as red, then fade into green, then fade into blue, then fade into white and then twinkle before recycling thru that pattern with the jumper off.    With the jumper on the lights turn white and stay white until you turn them off or remove the jumper.

I may be late doing these mods, but I thought I would post the info in case it would help someone else.  Searching this forum is the pits.  I also did not find any info on the using the test hex in the wiki.

[bassmants]

Thanks for the info.  I am in the process of modding some V2's and was wondering what wire to use as a jumper.  These are my first SSC's and will be learning as I go from here.

[Steve Gase]

I used a sharp box cutter to cut the trace and I wanted to make sure it was cut.  I found that if I put an ohm meter on the top hole for the resistor and touched the second pin on the pic nearest to the resistor that I would see a short or in my case a noise from my meter.  If the trace was cut well then I would not see a short or hear the little buzz noise from the meter.

I had similar experiences.
One thing that I additionally did: I used a little bit of nail polish to paint into the cut made by the box cutter.  I wanted to be sure that moisture would not get into that to close the circuit to get into the layers of the board. 

[tbone321]

Sealing the board sounds like a good idea.  I may look into doing that as well.

[zwiller]

I found it strangely convenient that the excess wire I had leftover from shortening the 3 wire connector to snug up to the board was the perfect size for the mod...

Great idea to seal it with nail polish (and my 13YO daughter prolly even has forest green) but on the other hand 1 ran 2 dozen unsealed last year and no problems.  That said, pigtails and cat 5 are gonna get some conformal... 

[thestig]

I have about 20 v2 that I have not built yet. What makes the v3 worth it? I am running a few v2 with flex strips and see no issues.


Grant

[Steve Gase]

If everything is working, then you might choose to do nothing.
The v3 mod with the resistor change should improve the behavior with some strings, and also allow longer lead wires (before the first pixel).  Some have seen flakiness with the v1 and v2.  v3 is intended to improve the situation. 
 
However, RJ plans to make changes to fix and improve the v3 and v4 controllers, but not the v1 and v2.  The changes to support additional color orders (BGR, BRG, GRB, GBR, RBG, rgb) will be available for v3, v4 and Zeus.
 
If you are happy with your strings -- the changes won't make things any better.
 
Grouping options might be another reason to have v3...  not sure about that.

[jnealand]

Steve, now that I'm finished, you post about using nail polish.  I have never had any moisture issues so I don't think about that and I really don't want to go back and try to paint between the resistors although I suppose it is do able.  A year plus ago I made a trip to the local dollar store and bought nail polish in red, green, blue, black, white, and clear to use with my model railroad electronics because it does make a good insulator.

One other thing I stumbled upon is that if you leave the programming jumper on and try to run for real nothing happens and not only does nothing happen, but removing the jumper does not make the lights start up like it does with the test firmware switching between color cycles and solid white.  It is necessary to take power off the SSC and then reapply power to get them to work.  Apparently the jumper state is read at power up and never checked again.

[zwiller]

I agree with Steve.  If they are working for you I wouldn't worry about it.  Kudos to RJ for modding and dealing all of with what I now believe are variances of manufacture overseas.  Steve brings up an interesting point about color order.  It is all over the place...  That said, I've always managed to get around it with the current utility.  From memory, I used the setting for rectangular modules to get correct correct color order for my flex strips.  The new rectangular modules (when they went down in price) also have a different color order than previously and strangely enough the flex strip setting worked.  As I said before, if you are not having problems don't sweat it but if you want to ensure that you can use future upgrades you will likely need to mod.  The only upgrade I anticipate is a new programming utility which allows ALL color orders to be selected but I am not aware of any hardware that cannot be programmed successfully with the current utility (with a little creativity).   

[tbone321]

I have about 20 v2 that I have not built yet. What makes the v3 worth it? I am running a few v2 with flex strips and see no issues.


Grant

Version 3 boosts the voltage on the signal line which makes the SSC work better with some strings.  As Steve also mentioned, all of the current and probably future firmware updates will be at Ver 3 and up.  It is much easier to perform the mod to the board prior to installing components so I would consider doing it before you build.