! good, 1 bad. I have one dongle that causes the lights to flicker/on-off whe

[Livermore-Dad]

Thanks to RJ, I've got the DMX dongle talking to a test Ren48LSD board. I have an issue though that based on my testing lies in my Dongle.

When I plug it in, go into vixen and click say channel 1, the leds come on/off/on/off/on/off they flicker. I plug my other dongle in and the lights stay on as they should, dim cleanly etcetcetc. 

So the question is, has someone seen this before and other then going over all my solder joints, is there a particular part that could be bad, if not just assembled bad, that would cause this type of behavior?.

Since I have one dongle totally playing nicely, it has to be something centric to my second dongle..

Thoughts ?

Thanks
Tory

[rrowan]

Just the basics and a couple ideas.

Basics: Parts in the right location and orientation, bent pins on the chips going into the sockets. Soldering problems

The following is just guesses at very early in the morning 3:28am, so take it with a grain of salt
Other: Pic not flashed properly or bad pic (unlikely), Crystal problem, Rs485 chip, Vixen setup correctly? (Baud 115200)

Rick R.

[Livermore-Dad]

Thanks Rick

I went over all the soldering and it loolks good. I compared parts and locations with both my working dongle and the awesome doc on this board and assembly.

I pulled the PIC and reflashed that as well. I will look in my case of parts and see what parts I can replace to test.

But no, it's not external to the dongle, since I can simple move from COM2 assigned Dongle and com7 assigned dongle with the same configuration, same test scenario and the good dongle works lovely. the bad likes to flicker,

[RJ]

Make sure you do not have two resistors swap on the bad dongle as this can do it.

RJ

[Livermore-Dad]

Anyone local or willing to take a look and see A) what I did wrong B), what part is borked C) other?

I built 2, one works flawless, the other not so much.

When it's told to turn a channel on, it causes the channel to flash/strobe, vs stay on steady.

I could offer a soda, a beer or something. Just not sure what it is, I thought it was the usb card but that doesn't seem to be it, as it functions. so something in the communication or the power.

I'm in NorCal, but this would cost  few bucks to ship anywhere in the US

Thanks
Tory

[RJ]

Have you checked the resistors to make sure they are not swapped?

Tried moving the two eight pin chips one at a time from the good to the bad one to see if one of these is the issue.

If neither of these get with me via pm to schedule some time in teamspeak to look at it.

RJ

[Livermore-Dad]

Thanks RJ

Ya I've checked the resistors, compared each one etc.

I'll try moving the 8 pins around to see if that helps and will give you a yell

Thanks
Tory

[barbotte]

good to see i am not the only one having trouble with fliker light on the 48 lsd ... but what is weird with mine is that it is not all the time ,,, ie if i disconet the lsd and plug it back then it would work for a white ,,, then flick again //// i did change cable ect but never though about the dongle  ,, something to look this week end
cheer

[Livermore-Dad]

Ya okay, so moved the 2 8 pin chips from the good dongle to the suspect one and I'm still getting flashing. What is interesting however is that if I select channel 2 I actually don't only get Green flashing, I see after 3 or more Flashes of Green, and then will see the red flash. (that's not right at all ))))

So I'm very unclear now how channel 1 LED's are getting juice when I've selected channel 2 only. And again it's every few flashes, I will see it go from Grn to Red.

So anyways, moved the 2 8 pins no change, my good one is still good, the bad one is still bad. I've swapped the PIC. Maybe it's the CAP? But I only have in smaller sizes , some 16volts 47uf Capacitors. If those will work I can try to swap out the cap.

So not sure what's next. I guess the crystal could be bad,  I also thought maybe the usb, but that connects and my computer seems to chat with it just fine, so really unsure. Could the RJ45 connector be off.. anyways just sure

[Livermore-Dad]

I swapped caps for grins and giggles and same exact behaviour.

So I've swapped the cap, the PIC the 8pins, verified the resistors. It's either the crystal or "could" it be the USB board? Just makes no sense.

So I'm at a loss, have a vid if anyone is interested to see exactly what it's doing

[rrowan]

At this point I would try to make a appointment with RJ in teamspeak to figure out the problem.

Is the crystal 40mhz?

Rick R.

[Livermore-Dad]

Yep that is the plan, just hate tying him up to troubleshoot someone elses issue, but he offered
Crystal ya 40.0 EK

I have some 18.43mhz here but don't have anymore of the type on the dongle. I have one working

Thanks again guys/gals/folks

Tory

[WWNF911]

I have seen some weird behavior before on one the guy accidently got a 40.0 khz ocillator vs a 40.0 mhz.

Just a thought.

Leon