Author Topic: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED  (Read 2538 times)

Offline inzeos

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Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« on: November 13, 2011, »
Got my first Aether II built up.  I've got it connected up to my power supply and I reflashed the PIC fresh and verified it's correct check sum.

When I crank up the channel #1 the RED LED fires up; however, it's very DIM and probably close to the intensity of the RED when in RED flashing mode.

GREEN, BLUE and WHITE seem to fire up OK and are much more intense than the RED.  However, regardless of the channel I'm using I get a flickering strobe effect from the LED PCB module.  When not transmitting anything to the Aether II I get a periodic slow red blip and occasionally other colors.  Just blinked green and white when I was writing this.

I've tried both pig tail inputs since I'm not sure, which one should be the correct input.

When I unplug the RJ45 cable the Aether flips over to intense steady white sometimes but not always.  Just now when I did it, it was green for a bit.  Then I tried it again and nothing...

Not sure how to troubleshoot this.  Hopefully you will have some advice for me.

I've looked over the PCB board and do not see any bridges that are visible to me.

Offline onesmoothhead

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2011, »
Can you take a good picture of the front and back of the PCB. I know it will a little tough, but we have some amazing eyes in this group. They have even found chips backwards on my stuff and I quad checked multiple times.

Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2011, »
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Can you take a good picture of the front and back of the PCB. I know it will a little tough, but we have some amazing eyes in this group. They have even found chips backwards on my stuff and I quad checked multiple times.

I can try and do that later.  Wife got called into the hospital today for her call shift so I've got my eyes on the little one until then.  Wondering if I should start using some sort of quick connect on all the cables from the LED PCB to the main PCB.  Not looking forward to unsoldering and resoldering those suckers for pictures!

Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2011, »
Waiting for my camera battery to charge to take some pictures.  Frustrating staring at this almost working piece of gear!

While I was waiting I tested my dongle and cable from the dongle to an existing express and had no issues running the same test sequences.  None of the rapid flickering presented itself on the express.


Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2011, »
Figures... Camera battery charged, new wiring installed for PCB to LED, DMX and power.  Added 20# sized quick connects to the LED wires, wire nutted the power in the housing and RJ45 jacks and coupler for DMX. Tested unit and had the same symptoms. Swapped the PIC and other chip out. Tested post swap and no flickering. However, red channel is faint at all levels.  Green never fires. Blue and white seem to work as designed.

Need to check the contanuety between the PCB and LED. Take a few pictures etc.

Unfortunately the wife got called in at this point. Need to watch the little one now and hopefully get back to this project tomorrow.

Open to suggestions on things to check tomorrow. Hesitant to start in on more units before getting this sucker functional.

Offline meman

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2011, »
Sounds like something is draining off the juice for those channels. Look under the board where the 8 wires come through, make sure that none of them are long enough to bend sideways and touch each other. I had that symptom...then the resistor started smoking after it was on for about 10 minutes  <fp. 

Offline Steve Gase

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2011, »
since extra heat is needed to get a good connection to the LED, it is also possible for the insulation to melt... maybe 2 wires have melted so that the conductors have come into contact.
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Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #7 on: November 14, 2011, »
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since extra heat is needed to get a good connection to the LED, it is also possible for the insulation to melt... maybe 2 wires have melted so that the conductors have come into contact.

I know that the wires are good. I redid them last night and their is ample spacing between them all.  Going to check the continuity between between all the links from the PCB to the LED PCB later today.  If that looks good I guess it isolates it to something defective on the LED PCB or the main board.

Wondering what points on the main board could possible be checked with a meter to determine if it is functioning or not.

Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2011, »
Small update green channel working.  Jury is out on why the RED is still extremely faint.  RED does adjust intensity just never gets bright.

Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #9 on: November 14, 2011, »
Need to take a few more pictures but managed to get these ones.  Might dig out my little point and shoot, which I think will take some better macro shots than my older DSLR.

Offline Steve Gase

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2011, »
The 5 pins in the the one part are very close together and it frustrated me as I soldered them to make sure that I wasn't bridging any of the leads.  I think that might be happening for you.  Maybe you can wick away some of the solder on pins 2, 3 and 4. The picture looks to me as if they might be bridging, and since that is for the red channel it also makes it highly suspect.

Steve
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Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #11 on: November 14, 2011, »
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The 5 pins in the the one part are very close together and it frustrated me as I soldered them to make sure that I wasn't bridging any of the leads.  I think that might be happening for you.  Maybe you can wick away some of the solder on pins 2, 3 and 4. The picture looks to me as if they might be bridging, and since that is for the red channel it also makes it highly suspect.

Steve

Yeah I was thinking about that as well when I was looking at my picture.  I think there should be more spacing between those pins.  Maybe in a v2 of the Aether II board they could be slightly off set or something...

Offline inzeos

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Re: Aether II - Flickering LED / Weak RED
« Reply #12 on: November 14, 2011, »
Further narrowed it down potentially...

Replaced the component near the "R" on the PCB board.  Wired up pig tails to another LED PCB as well.  Tested the newly replaced component with the original LED and had the same results.  Wired in the new LED PCB and still had the same results.

Think I'm done w/ this until I can get some of RJ's attention to shed some light on this.