Did my dongle just die?

[naztrain]

I've had this dongle for three years, never had a problem with it.  My spare parts arrived to fix my LE, and when I went to test it, there was no DMX signal light on the LE.  I checked and in vixen on the plugin setup, I checked the settings for the Enttec and there was no port listed.  So I looked in Device manager and there was no LPT/COM subheading.  I restarted my computer, same story.  I took the dongle out to the computer that runs the show, and when I plugged it in it said that the device was unrecognized and that it had encountered an error.

I reinstalled the ftdi driver on this computer, but it didn't do anything.  The dongle worked the last time I used it, and it hasn't done anything but sit inside the house not connected to anything since the last time I used it.

Any ideas?

[naztrain]

I also tried doing a system restore, but that didn't do anything.  Rebooting either computer has no effect.  I've tried 2 different USB cables.  I have a multimeter, but I don't know what else to test.

[rrowan]

with a meter you could try putting the leads on each side of the cap to the right of the pic or pins 19 and 20 of the pic. You should see about 5volts with the dongle connected to the pc

But if you computer is not seeing the dongle, my guess would be the usb module above the pic is the problem.

Rick R.

[naztrain]

I'm not getting any reading on the capacitor, but between pins 19 and 20 I'm getting 0.4 volts.

[naztrain]

Are the Dongle pic and the LE pics interchangeable assuming you program them correctly?  I know very little about how the pics actually work.  If I have my LE, can I use a PicKit3 to reprogram the

I'm considering buying half the BOM for the dongle and ordering faster shipping to get it here before the whole season is over.  Other than the three chips, the USB card and the triac, should I order anything else?

This has got to be the most frustrating problem ever... I have to replace the majority of my dongle in order to test to see IF the express works so I can maybe get my show going this year...

[rrowan]

So it sounds like the usb module is not feeding power from the pc usb port into the dongle.

if you are brave you could try these mods to the module to see if you can get the dongle re-powered up

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Rick R.

[rrowan]

Are the Dongle pic and the LE pics interchangeable assuming you program them correctly?  I know very little about how the pics actually work.  If I have my LE, can I use a PicKit3 to reprogram the

I'm considering buying half the BOM for the dongle and ordering faster shipping to get it here before the whole season is over.  Other than the three chips, the USB card and the triac, should I order anything else?

This has got to be the most frustrating problem ever... I have to replace the majority of my dongle in order to test to see IF the express works so I can maybe get my show going this year...

No the pics are totally different between the dongle and the LE

Rick R.

[naztrain]

Thanks for the tip.  Sadly, I was unable to solder it... how on earth do you solder something in that position?  It's practically embedded in the chip!

So I wouldn't be able to program the Dongle pic using the socket on the LE then, right?