First I’d like to thank RJ and all of the heavy hitters for posting so much information and even video of the assembly process. Building the Lynx Express V5 really is a breeze and it’s become a father and son project with my 9 year old. I even had to buy a breadboard, LEDs and resistors to keep him busy while I’m doing the big stuff. He's already made a crude blinky on the side and got extra credit at school just for bringing it in and showing the class.
The only problems we’ve had so far are a bad PIC program and comical human errors caused by my haste to get it built and make some lights blink!
I finished the first of four LEs a couple of nights ago and knew something was wrong when channel 6 stayed lit and I got no scrolling on the display. I hit the this forum and found out that a problem with the PIC programming had already been identified in some of the kits in the recent coop, so I shifted gears and thought I’d play with the pic programmer (first time ever trying that too) to try and fix it. Burnt up some time on that and finally just decided to swap out the chip with one of my other kits and revisit the programmer later. That cured the documented problem with channel 6, but still no scrolling. Checked all the solder joints, touched up a few, seated chips, but still couldn’t get it to work
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that troubleshooting is a lot easier if you have a working specimen for reference, so we proceeded to build the second LE. The funniest point of the night was when my son plugged it in for the power/smoke test. Nothing; no LEDs lit, nada….then laughter. The transformer was still laying on the table…DUH
We got the rest of it together and started plugging in chips when I made another mistake and seated the SAAxxx display driver in backwards. I caught it, but this motion seemed so natural I wondered if I had done it before….sure enough, the chip was in backwards on the first LE too. Flipped it around and voila…scrolling and tests ran OK on both boards. WaHoooo!
Now I just need to get the Pic Kit figured out so I can program the Dongle and we’ll be controllin’ the Blinky
Thanks again everyone!!!
