New build - red light & no green light

[kenlmcse]

I built my dongle but it does not work. I have a steady red light and no green light. Windows finds the dongle and assigns it a com port. I did some testing using the specs from the data sheets. I have confirmed all my solder joints with a magnifying glass. I ended up using a compatible 22uf 16v cap, however I confirmed I get 5v out of both sides of the dc to dc convertor. I cannot figure out how to test the mosfit. I do not have power at the center lug, the datasheet does not help...  I found when testing the power at the optocoupler that when I short pins 5 & 6 the green light comes on but dim.

Any ideas on what to do or where to go next?

Thanks

[tbone321]

Did you load the firmware on the Pic and confirm that it loaded properly>

[kenlmcse]

I forgot to mention that. Yes, I tested the pic and verified the pic was programmed.

[rrowan]

Unless I am totally wrong.

The green led will only light up when the dongle is sending out data. So if the dongle is connected to your computer and your run a sequence from your choice of software and or use something like RJ's dmx deck to send data. You don't need to connect anything to the output for this to work.

Red led is showing the dongle is getting power and Green led is sending data.

Cheers

Rick R.

[bisquit476]

Do you have the FTDI drivers installed, by the sound of your first post, it seems like you let Windows install a driver. The Dongle needs the FTDI driver to work, if I remember correctly, also see this post

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RJ's reply is what I am referring to,

Bill

[tbone321]

Make sure that the Pic and the 485 are installed correctly and have no bent pins.  Also make sure that the green LED is not backwards.  You may want to post a few pictures of it so that we can see it.

[taybrynn]

Like rick said, try using it was sequencing software and send some DMX information, then the green light should blink.  I thought mine wasn't working either, but once I started sending information to the dongle (didn't hook it up to anything else) ... the green light started blinking.

[tng5737]

I recently had a port go out on my usb hub - no green light either.  Once I switched ports all was fine.  You could also build the handy little test circuit mentioned in this post
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a couple of leds and should tell you if the sig is good!

[taybrynn]

There is a thread on here about a related problem ... related to the power saving feature in windows ... which turns off your USB port after a certain amount of time.  And that forces you to re-plug it in before it will work again.  I believe the symptom is the right light going off after a while.  The fix is to change the power saving settings to disable the USB power-off, which is on by default, at least in Windows 7.  Again, they is probably not your problem, since your getting the red light and just not the green.  Send some signals to the dongle from sequencing software and see if your green light blinks.

[kenlmcse]

I have offically given up on this dongle. I am going to order new parts from mouser and try making another.

Tonight I reprogrammed the pic chip; tried a second pic chip I had. The other night I hit al the solder joints, I have taken voltage readings, ohm readings. All to no avail.

Maybe after I build a second (and it works) I will be able to figure out what is wrong with this one.   At least my Open dmx dongle works

Thanks for all your input!

[bisquit476]

You could post close up pic's, we could take a look, maybe find something  that didn't catch your eye.

[bisquit476]

When did you buy the parts? Last year there was some of the USB modules bad. Maybe you got one of those?

[RJ]

There is no reason to give up, post pictures of it so we can look for issues. Answer the post that have info already here so we know where to move forward with.  One person asked are you sending data to it. Another asked about how you loaded the drivers. They are waiting to hear answers before we can close out the common issues and give you the next step.

We will help you get it going.

RJ

[kenlmcse]

I am not giving up, I was going to order a new set of parts to build another. I bought two pcb's.
I order the parts last week from Mouser. My computer recongnizes the unit, Vixen regonizes the unit and xLights also recognizes it. I have tried sequences and Vixen/xLights testors. I totally removed the drivers with the removal tool and then reinstalled them. I erased the chip and reprogramed. I also verfied the chip as well. I will take pics of the board.

Thanks everyone for all of your help!

[lineman]

could you have a bad led will the dongle send out dmx to a LE