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Hey all,
I got my BD kit for Christmas. I built it Christmas night. Everything has been working great until this afternoon. I noticed the clock going orange occasionally. Once I finally got a chance to look at what was going on, I realized that the 12 position blue LED was not lighting. I went into the alignment mode and found that all sorts of stuff was now goofed up.Things like on Blue… the 10ish position both this and the 10:30 position LEDs light ( 10:30 being brighter). At 10:30 , 10 and 10:30 lights with 10:30 brighter, 12 straight up sort of flickers but is off mostly and the next LED lights and so does the 12 and 9 position on the red ring. There are other combinations of blue LEDs on at the same time. There are many points on the red ring where a red LED will light but just barely.On Green from 6-11:30 are fine, then from 12-6 there are 2 LEDs on at a time. They are spaced by apart by 6 LEDs. They move together each press with the proper LED being the brighter of the 2. Then as it gets farther around the dial the dominant LED gets brighter and the earlier LED gets dimmer. Not sure if this makes sense.On Red, 12-3 are goofed up. 12 and 3 are lit together and 1 & 2 are lit together. This is the same with the proper LED being the brightest of the 2. Also this is the dimmest doubling of the 3 rings where the dimmer of the 2 lit is nearly off. It is on by just a hint. Normally I would have suspected a soldering error (which hI have not ruled out), but I was able to fully align everything and have it all work for the first 2 days.
I have not played with the code at all, so it is the source that shipped with the clock and I seriously doubt that this is a chronodot issue.I have no idea where to start on this one. Any ideas?If just one of the ten LED lines is not wired up correctly– for example, if a solder joint has failed –you will start to see these kinds of funny lit-up patterns. And yes, it’s an effect of charlieplexing.
When you’re describing the LED positions, I’m not sure if you’re describing the locations of the LEDs that are lit up, or if you mean the opposite– the LEDs that light to indicate those times. But in any case, you should check each of the vertical LED line jumper wires, and especially the connections at the microcontroller and the resistors– those are the most likely places for the issue to be located.If you have a multimeter handy, you might check to see if there’s a short circuit between lines LED1 and LED2, or between either of those lines and LED10. There could be a solder blob or stray wire somewhere causing the problem. I’m having a little trouble following most of your specific LED locations, but that would be my guess from your description on the red ring.
The Zerohm jumpers really are a specific type of wire jumper. They are not actually resistors; we did not choose them “instead” of wire jumpers. They are inexpensive, easy to count out, convenient, easy to identify, and their shape makes step 33 of the instructions pretty easy. Without that “bead” in the middle, we’d need to figure out some other way to hold them in place, and make sure that there was enough length on both sides.If it was working properly to begin with, you can be assured that all of the LEDs are facing in the correct directions; they don’t spontaneously reverse direction. And, if you really need to look, the right way to verify the orientation is by looking at the flat face on the collar of each LED, rather than at the internal wireframes; those vary between different types of LEDs.
Reflowing all the solder joints is usually *not* the way to find a problem, but it can easily create new ones if you overheat the LEDs, damage the traces, or create dry joints out of good ones. Instead, try to look and see where the problem actually is, and only resolder where absolutely necessary.I’m not sure that I understand what you mean by “flipping and flopping.” You should measure the resistances with the power off; nothing should be changing while you do that.If LED D21 is very dim, that could also point to a possible connection between lines LED1 and LED2. Please check the resistance between these lines; they should not be connected.A youtube video would probably not be helpful. Checking the resistance between the LED lines would be. :)Yes, 690 ohms sounds very low. It definitely sounds like there is something wrong there. However, it may be hard to diagnose, because it seems as though something has failed partway– not all the way open or shorted –either of which would make this pretty straightforward. In the absence of any better guidance, and if D12 seems to be working more-or-less correctly, I’d suggest replacing D21, as it seems like that is the likely point of failure.
If you’d prefer, you might want to consider sending it to us for analysis; we’d be willing to replace that LED for you, and figure out what the problem is otherwise.As far as the faceplate without a hole goes, you may not need one. A common procedure when installing the rear-projection plate is to use the original opaque clock face to cover the big hole in the other side. Just use it instead of the washers on that side.It’s better for everyone if you can get it fixed on your own, but if you do get really stuck, we’re here to help. :)
So, your two basic approaches at this point would be either (a) carefully document what the actual status is right now, or (b) send it back for us to take a look at it. Seeing as we’re getting on several months now, I’d tend to advise option (b) at this point. If you’d like to do that, please contact our store directly.
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