newbie with 27ch Controller

[Rickras85]

Hello everyone,
This year will be my first year using controllers and everything so far has been going smoothly in my planning and testing. I have all my smart pixels wired and tested.
However when it comes to the dumb pixels etc. I am having a few problems. I have recently purchased 4 2nd hand 27ch controller boards (ray wu) and they were all working a few months ago using my own pixlite long range as a dmx converter/bridge. Now when it comes to setting everything up again, I am having a few issues 2 are working perfectly fine and the dmx/power light is blinking away as it should, the other 2 one the led is just solid on and the other stays solid unless I remove the dmx plug which it blinks normally for a few seconds then goes solid again. I have tried swapping the dip swicthes around to see if they are the problem.

The 4 boards are currently all daisy chained so the data is getting through as the others are working.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[scamper]

Have you plugged in or hard wired the data to the boards?
If they are plugged, then to make absolutely sure, just plug one of the non working ones into a spot that is working.


I say this as I made a rookie error recently when I hooked one up and wired the data in line to the output instead and gave that exact symptom.

 

[Rickras85]

I have just checked and double checked to be sure after you mentioned it, they have 2 x rj45 connectors via some wire soldered onto each board so I put the dodgy ones in the middle and the 2 working at the start and end and still no luck.
I have also tested for continuity from board to board to make sure they are connected properly and went as far onto the board as possible.
Has anyone had the small ic chips that convert the dmx differential fail.

 

[i13]

Are these the 27 channel controllers that have the RJ45 plugs already on them or were they added by the previous owner? Have you added a termination resistor?

When they were working, did you just test them separately? You have to be gentle with the RJ45 sockets if your controllers are the type that came with them because they can be damaged. This could mean that one or more of the controllers have one bad socket and you happened to test them with the good socket when they worked.

 

[Rickras85]

They were added by the previous owner. There are 2 connectors per board, these connecters are soldered via wires together on the board. As the good boards are at the start and finish, I am assuming that, along with testing continuity that the plugs are in correctly as they have to go through the solder joint on the board. I have also tested for continuity from the solder pads referred above to the xlr connectors.

 

[i13]

Connect the Cat5 cable between the controllers and test for continuity from the solder pads on one controller to the solder pads on the other controller.

Have you added a termination resistor?

It's possible to buy the receiver chips cheaply off Ebay but they don't fail very often. I have a bunch of spares here that and they say:
14A18DN
SN75176BP
Only the second line was in the listing title. I haven't used them but they were bought from the same listing as another ACL member who has used them. If you replace them, I'd suggest adding a socket so you don't have to do any soldering if it fails again in future.