Pico Crumble sound issue

[Twitsy]

Hello all. I'm new to the forums but I know a little. What I don't know is why my Pico Crumble v2.5 isn't giving me sound. The solder joints are sturdy, if a little unsightly, and everything is making a great connectioin. I know it isn't MOTG as i won't even play the boot sound and I'm fairly certain it isn't the speaker because I've tried 2 now and neither of them seemed to work. I took a bunch of pictures with a macro lens so hopefully sombody can help point me in the right direction.

[IdleLayabout]

Presume you're only running a single LED? You don't mention if the LED comes on, is it only the sound that's not working? I'm not seeing a second wire to positive from the activation switch, assuming you've connected this earlier in the circuit. The speaker joints don't look great and the pic quality doesn't show enough surface detail. Have you checked for a short with a multimeter? Worst case scenario you have solder spatter somewhere on the board.

[Twitsy]

Yes, I'm just running a single LED. I can't seem to find my multimeter and I try to join all positives and negatives together before they get to the board. I'll try looking one more time for my multimeter and double check for shorts

[Twitsy]

the speaker seems to be etting power.The speaker I have wired up is a 2w bass speaker that's marked with a positive and negative lead. To test it I put the red wire from the multimeter to the positive of the battery and the negative to the speaker tabs while it's powered on and it seems to get power. However, when i pull the killkey and do the same test without powering the saber on, it reads nearly 1 volt and then the saber won't power on until I reinsert the killkey.I'm not quite sure what that means but I feel like I messed something up somewhere along the way. Any help is appreciated

[IdleLayabout]

Looking at the 3rd pic you posted, did you try to add an accent LED and then remove it? I see solder on the deep sleep pad, the power on pad and a small amount on the pad next to it and what looks like a fair amount of solder splatter between them. In fact looking at my pico and generally others on the internet I'm seeing a large amount of solder around the small chip with the letters RA on it (power regulator)?. In fact in your second pic the one leg looks a bit toasty. Did you have a soldering mishap in this area?

17573

[Twitsy]

I did have a bit of a problem right there but I thought I had fixed it... clearly not. It's all good though, I decided to upgrade to a NBv4 so I can use a custom boot sound as this saber is going to my sister for her birthday in August. This is my first full sound saber build so a couple hiccups are expected righht???

[IdleLayabout]

I'm in South Africa and with the exchange rate I could put a deposit down on a car for a few NB4s, so no, I never want to make a mistake, although it happens :-(

What I do is place masking tape over all of the board I'm not working on to prevent splatter, make sure the iron is hot and well tinned and hope like hell I don't mess up. Having desolder braid at hand is useful.

[Cern]

"place masking tape over all of the board I'm not working on to prevent splatter"

That is a great idea, thank you for sharing it!

[Twitsy]

That's a fantastic idea, IdleLayabout! I'll definitely be doing this when the new board comes in. Thanks for the tip!

[IdleLayabout]

Thanks but it's not my idea, I think I saw this in one of Rob Petkau's videos.