Hardware > Lynx Aether

Problematic Aether I

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Gary:
I set up my light display, and long story short, I discovered a bad Aether 1 board in storage that I must have swapped out with a spare last season that I forgot to troubleshoot in the off-season.

I powered it up, and it displayed green without even a DMX signal.

After some troubleshooting by reprogramming the PIC chip, I thought I have eradicated the issue about the green being on for no reason, but it's still acting funny:

When I turn on channel 1, I get purple.
When I turn on channel 2, I get red.
When I turn on channel 3, I get nothing.
When I turn on channel 4, I get blue.

I used the Lynx Express Configuration Utility, downloaded the new light list, set Curves 1, 2, 3 and 4 to Aether1, Aether2, Aether3, and Aether 4 respectively, but it didn't make a difference.

Doing some more experimenting, I did notice that the green sometimes flickered again. With some reading of old PMs, the "green" channel circuitry is on the left side of the board (red middle, blue right), and I noticed that if I tap my fingernail on the LED Driver (the thing with 8 conductors) I get flickering green. If I turn on channel 2 (red) and tap the LED Driver, I get yellow (i.e. red and green make yellow). Channel 1 is supposed to be white, so if green from the RGB array is missing, I get only red and blue, which make purple)

Is it safe to say that the LED Driver chip is at fault and should be fixed?

Looking at old PM messages, I found a part number in a BOM that RJ sent me: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Investigating the reason for the PM from RJ, I found this message thread I started in 2011 in regards to a problematic green LED driver:
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As I was reading the thread again refreshing my memory, I looked and discovered that the problematic Aether I in question was the same one as I have now (i.e. residue of white epoxy near the chip that I replaced 5 years ago).

Any ideas on why this board killed the driver chip for the Green channel again a few years later? Is there something else I should replace other than just the LED driver?

packetbob:
It's funny....
One of my Aether 1 units just started having an issue....
Channel 1 gives me all white (so I know all the drivers are working)
I get no RGB for the other 3 channels.....

Time to pull it apart......

tbone321:
Make sure that channel one is set to ZERO or the other 3 will not function. 

packetbob:
tbone321
that was my problem..
thanks for the help....

Gary:
Any ideas on my original post?

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