Petit Crouton Sound Board 1.6 - Sudden Failure

[simjason]

I just finished my first saber and did final assembly. Everything worked great for a little while, then something bad must have happened... Either the board shorted out or I have a bad connection somewhere. Before I take the whole thing apart again (a bit of an ordeal with this particular build), I figured I'd ask.

Symptom: As soon as the battery is connected, I get a sound from the speaker that sounds like its growling at me. Don't know how else to describe it. No startup sound, no LED functions, and the power on switch is unresponsive.

Anyone experienced this before? Please tell me I just have a bad connection or non-critical short somewhere... I've already checked the speaker connections, and the connections to the board itself and everything looks fine. The only remaining possibility would be connections at the switches and charging jack... Of course, I'll check them next. But, at the moment, my gut tells me it's the worst and whatever happened in there fried the board.

[brett]

I have had the exact same thing happen to me when I first wired up my board. Strangely enough it turned out to be a low battery. It may not be the case for you, but I really hope it is.

[Wong Yoon Wei]

Do charged the batteries and try again. I had sabers acting weird before due to low bat.

If that didn't work, remove the board and only wire the speaker and battery pack and see it is powers on.

[Crystal Chambers]

I've had this happen too and I believe it was using a single 3.7V Li-Ion cell as apposed to the more recommended 7.4V. It was a low charge issue but I haven't had it happen at all with the 7.4V packs.

It can be scarey at times but most issues seem to be fixable one way or another.

[simjason]

Beautiful! Makes perfect sense... Now that I think of it, I've had other electronics act similarly with low batteries. Will give it a shot!

[Crystal Chambers]

3.7V will work fine with some LEDs till the battery gets low. The rebel and lux3 should be fine with them. Ledengine require more juice.

[simjason]

To clarify, I'm using a 7.4v pack. And, I just charged up and, unfortunately, the problem remains. Any other ideas before I tear this thing apart? ;)

[Wong Yoon Wei]

At this point, you will need to tear the PC apart, might be a grounding issue or something.

[simjason]

Ok, I pulled the board, disconnecting everything but the speaker. I hard wired the battery to the board, and I get the same symptom. Yikes... I don't see any obvious signs of damage / shorting / overheating on the board, so I really have no clue what could be wrong at this point. Need a miracle... anyone have any extra to share?

[Silver Serpent]

Pics of the board and wiring might be helpful.

[simjason]

69456946

These first two shots are the board as it is now. Please excuse the crappy soldering; the connections on there now are temporary for testing. All that is connected is the speaker and the battery. You'll notice the clash sensor is missing... I broke it in the final fitment process. Oops. The installation area for electronics in this saber is extremely tight. Nonetheless, everything else on the board worked fine without it so I did not concern myself with it for now as I'm aware a replacement component is available.

69476948

Here's a couple shots I took for reference while I was doing the final assembly. The main and aux switches aren't wired, but everything else is in this shot.

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I had that thought that perhaps somehow the SD card was corrupted, so since it was a simple check, I plugged it in. I got some strange results, but as I've never done so before I have no baseline. I tried it in both a Mac and a PC. Same results. The card reads as blank, unformatted. The systems also see it as only a 32GB card (approx.) So, perhaps a bad card is the culprit.

What file format does the PC board need? FAT-32?

Thanks for the help!

[simjason]

Update: No luck on the SD card theory. Tried a different card with same results.

[Zzan]

looks like an awful lot of solder coming through the holes where you soldered your speaker on. Are you sure those beads on the bottom of the board are not touching the sd card holder? This is a big source of problems from what I have read.

I would get some desoldering braid and remove all that solder and try not to use so much that it comes through on the bottom when you re-solder it. And make sure you don't stick your wires through the holes especially on the speaker connections.

[simjason]

I'll try these suggestions, Zzan. Thanks.

[brett]

Have you only one battery pack, because as everything else looks like it might be OK, it could be a problem still in that area. You probably have tried different batteries. Wish you luck (still).

[simjason]

I do have only one pack. I suppose it's possible something is damaged with the batteries, but they've only been charged twice, so I can't imagine they'd be bad already... ?

[Ari-Jaq Xulden]

I noticed you feed the wires through the holes. That's a no no for this board. It kinda looks like your speaker wire is touching the sd card housing. I would remove all the solder joints and wires and start over. Make sure the solder is only on the pad on the side you solder to. I would solder the speaker wires on the top of the board. This will prevent any possible mishaps. Do not try to melt the solder with the iron. Heat the wire atop the pad and push the solder into the pad. You will see it pool in a puddle when the pad becomes hot enough.

[JRD1]

I second this, on some boards you can get away with soldering through the holes, but things on this board are so close together unless your a pro at soldering you might get overlap and a short. Another suggestion would be to get a tooth brush and some Isopropyl alcohol and after removing all solder with solder removal braid you could lightly scrub the board down to get any residual solder balls or whiskers off that you might not see.... just a thought. Remember to let it dry completely... before resoldering and applying power.


I noticed you feed the wires through the holes. That's a no no for this board. It kinda looks like your speaker wire is touching the sd card housing. I would remove all the solder joints and wires and start over. Make sure the solder is only on the pad on the side you solder to. I would solder the speaker wires on the top of the board. This will prevent any possible mishaps. Do not try to melt the solder with the iron. Heat the wire atop the pad and push the solder into the pad. You will see it pool in a puddle when the pad becomes hot enough.

[simjason]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I got around to fiddling with this again today... I did as suggested and removed all the solder from the contacts, cleaned the board, and tried again. No dice. Same symptoms. I got a referral for a PC repair service so I'm looking in to that at this point...

[Zella Rivens]

What ended up being your issue? I ran into a very similar issue with a CF V5.1 this week. Had it wired and working, then added a lead for a power on LED to the pad indicated in the manual. The pad wasn't shorted since i tested it again prior to connecting that lead to the led. Once i connected the power on led and connected the battery, the power on led lit, and the board wouldn't turn on. I disconnected the battery and the power on led lead from the led, and reconnected the battery. At this point i got the beeps and no response fromt he board. I removed the SD card and when i connected it to my computer received corruption errors, and saw most of the files were gone. I reformatted the card and reinstalled. Board worked fine. Attempted to reconnect the led, same thing. I went round a few times to make myself frustrated :). In th end i removed the lead from the power pad, and opted to use the acc1 led pad instead. slightly different behavior, but I think with some tweaks to the configs I'll be happy. I'm cuious to know if anyone else had run inot something similar? I've searched and this was the closest related issue with respect to symptoms,