xconspirisist
Newbie level 3
Hey folks, I'm new here and I'm making my first post a request for help!
I have acquired a large LED message board from a car boot sale, it was cheap and unfortunately I've not yet got it working. I am posting this request for help because I have spent the last 3-4 days trying to at least determine what is going wrong.
The basics, the message board has no model number or manufacturer on the product itself. I have not yet found its manual or datasheet. It appears to be made by cheer-led, model number CL-A24X80RG. It has an array of LEDs, 24x80 organized in square blocks of 8. The ports on the device are a IEC 320 C13 (kettle cable) and two RJ11 sockets. I have removed the power supply from the back and have changed the power supply voltage switch to 110v despite living in the UK, powering it using a step down transformer and an American kettle cable. The message board came with a RJ11-M -> DE9-M (serial) cable.
When I plug in the board either on 240v/110v with the appropriate power, of course, approximately 75% of the time 3-4 entire rows light up, but abruptly turn off after about a half second. The power supply does not smell of blown up capacitors (not that I know what would happen if I plugged the incorrect voltage in) and all the IC's on the circuit board look fine. The PCB itself looks in pristine condition. Could this behavior be because of a short circuit or similar?
A friend sent me a programming manual for another CHEER-LED product, which requires a buad rate of 2400, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity or flow control. Using this is a base, I have written some C for Linux and C# for Windows and tried bombarding the serial port with random bytes between 0 and 255 in a vein attempt at getting something to happen! I've used a serial port monitor, but cannot tell if the sign is actually reading the bytes, I have no idea. I've also tried sending some more structured instructions to the sign, which seem to take the format of [instruction number = 1-15][arguments ??][0xFF] but obviously have had no luck. I'm leading to think that the sign is not reading anything on the serial port. The only indication of life is there is a small red LED on the circuit board itself, which I assume means the sign has power (ie, the abrupt cut out may not be from the power supply tripping).
I fear this post is getting long enough, I include the specifications I have found so far in the following txt file:
tydus.net/cheerled/findings.txt
and some pictures here, mainly focussing on what I can only loosely describe as the "motherboard".
tydus.net/cheerled/ (jpegs, max 1mb each)
Can anyone suggest what I should look at next? Many thanks in advance for any help.
I have acquired a large LED message board from a car boot sale, it was cheap and unfortunately I've not yet got it working. I am posting this request for help because I have spent the last 3-4 days trying to at least determine what is going wrong.
The basics, the message board has no model number or manufacturer on the product itself. I have not yet found its manual or datasheet. It appears to be made by cheer-led, model number CL-A24X80RG. It has an array of LEDs, 24x80 organized in square blocks of 8. The ports on the device are a IEC 320 C13 (kettle cable) and two RJ11 sockets. I have removed the power supply from the back and have changed the power supply voltage switch to 110v despite living in the UK, powering it using a step down transformer and an American kettle cable. The message board came with a RJ11-M -> DE9-M (serial) cable.
When I plug in the board either on 240v/110v with the appropriate power, of course, approximately 75% of the time 3-4 entire rows light up, but abruptly turn off after about a half second. The power supply does not smell of blown up capacitors (not that I know what would happen if I plugged the incorrect voltage in) and all the IC's on the circuit board look fine. The PCB itself looks in pristine condition. Could this behavior be because of a short circuit or similar?
A friend sent me a programming manual for another CHEER-LED product, which requires a buad rate of 2400, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity or flow control. Using this is a base, I have written some C for Linux and C# for Windows and tried bombarding the serial port with random bytes between 0 and 255 in a vein attempt at getting something to happen! I've used a serial port monitor, but cannot tell if the sign is actually reading the bytes, I have no idea. I've also tried sending some more structured instructions to the sign, which seem to take the format of [instruction number = 1-15][arguments ??][0xFF] but obviously have had no luck. I'm leading to think that the sign is not reading anything on the serial port. The only indication of life is there is a small red LED on the circuit board itself, which I assume means the sign has power (ie, the abrupt cut out may not be from the power supply tripping).
I fear this post is getting long enough, I include the specifications I have found so far in the following txt file:
tydus.net/cheerled/findings.txt
and some pictures here, mainly focussing on what I can only loosely describe as the "motherboard".
tydus.net/cheerled/ (jpegs, max 1mb each)
Can anyone suggest what I should look at next? Many thanks in advance for any help.
