[glennkachmar]

Thanks. Yeah. I’m done. I’m so tired I can’t spend any more time than this (I work full time with three part time jobs) and I’m spending my spare time doing this.

Maybe I’ll try again next year.

Thanks for the help.

[glennkachmar]

I found a mistake. Even when I put the pin header where it belongs, it still didn’t work. I am disappointed that after spending hours on this I am still debugging it. I am giving up. Two kits bought and delivered at high cost with no gain but hours of my spare time were lost. Besides my lousy soldering skills, the pins are so close together I can’t solder accurately enough. I think I’m done.

[glennkachmar]

I sorted out the mistake causing the issues I am having. The DIL header was in the wrong place. I guess you shouldn’t try soldering stuff after a twelve hour workday especially when you are not that good at soldering in the first place. I didn’t think I needed to program the microcontroller. I will keep that in mind about the socket.

Thanks

[glennkachmar]

Wow, fixed in record time! I now have eight functioning panels. I do not know how to thank you.

I rechecked the solder joints and one seemed sketchy, so I redid it. No change. While the panel was powered on, I looked closely at the front of the panel. Most of my debugging has focused on the back. I saw a little piece of metal sticking up that must have been pushed out when I struggled to get the diode through the blocked hole. Thinking the piece of metal should be removed, I used a mini screwdriver to take it of. When that piece of metal contacted my screwdriver which as also touching the diode’s wire, the lights changed and started blinking in the correct pattern. So I soldered that piece of metal on top of the panel and it works perfectly. I can not believe it is finally working.

You were dead on in that last post. And I rarely give up.

So thanks a million.

[glennkachmar]

OK. I may try to buy another one from EMS, if I can’t resolve it by fixing the solder joint. Thanks again.

I will go check it (again) now.

[glennkachmar]

OK thanks. This is very helpful.

[glennkachmar]

I’ve got 7 out of 8 panels running perfectly. The 8th will have some issues. I had a blocked hole for the diode and struggled to get the diode through it. Tried a lot of different things to unblock the hole. I also had to use a resistor that I had accidentally put in to a practice board (I started using the Evil Mad Science ones by accident. I later had to remove it from the practice board and use it for the 8th panel as I ran out). So that last panel has some work on it before it wil be working.

But the most important thing to point out is that your suggestions have given me the confidence I needed to debug the panels. I fixed 2 based on your advice. Thanks a million.

[glennkachmar]

OK, solved that one panel. Now I may debug the others a little.

Funny story: I wanted to check the LED collars as you suggested, but didn’t know what these are. So I googled “LED collars.” I don’t have a dog, but if I ever want to know what I need to walk one at night, I now have the answer. It brought me no closer to the solution though (but I figured it out).

The issue was some of the points where I soldered the leads – some were barely soldered in and one or two were black.

Thanks, by the way, for the help.

[glennkachmar]

I was wrong. Five of the other LED’s in the quadrant of the panel I mentioned are off (the other five in the top half of that quadrant). All of the LEDs in the bottom half of that quadrant work fine. But I had two panels doing with the five bright lights thing and now it is just one. So that is good.

I have another panel that has so many issues, I’ve signed it up for group therapy. I will be checking that one later. And another with a few issues. But I’d just like six working panels right now, so I’ll be happy if I solve the issues with the one panel.

[glennkachmar]

Those five LEDs are fully bright and the others are acting normally. I will check the orientation. I didn’t realize there was a way to do this once the leads were clipped.

I don’t know much about electronics, so the music idea may be a huge challenge. Likely is.

[Author]

Posts