Alternate way of connecting button LED's

Seeking an alternate way of illuminating the button LED's independantly from the hijack logic (not sure how to ask this one).

Since i've extended the display, having the button LED's hooked up will cause intermittant issues with the empeg. Even if I have them disabeled in hijack, they still momentarily blink when the player boots up (sets the brightness of the display) causing the display to go dim. I've tried to remedy this using an initial macro in hijack to set the brightness up after it is booted up. Unfortuantly, when the macro runs, it causes the button LED's to blink each time the brightness is turned up or down a notch. This can intermittantly cause the display to go dim again. It is also intermittant when the button LED's turn on (when the empeg is powering on).

What i'd like to do is just give the LED's power when the player is on, forcing them to always be on at 100%. After looking through the install manual from eutronix, it seems that they need 5vDC. Is there a way of doing this w/out desoldering the button LEDS from the board? With the knob board, I could probably just disconnect the signal lead and ground it i'm assuming, however the ground leads to the button LED's appear to be directly connected to a regulated ground?

I've tried everything from timing the macro to changing the buttonled_off options in hijack. I've also tried 10nf-20nf capasitors on the dimming logic behind the display board with no luck.

Thanks alot!!

You know, I had issues with my buttons recently, and the solution was to fix the (very hard to detect) broken solder joint on pin 1 of the PIC near the buttons. Your problem wouldn't be as simple as that, would it?

I've read that thread and probably just about every other thread pertaining to these sorts of issues... I'm done with trying to fix it, it is simply something to do w/ the extra 7" of display ribbon that I have. When the extender is out of the loop, everything works fine. I don't mind losing the dimming functionality of the LED's...

Look at the attachment, I drew red circles over the "signal" lines. could I just lift those and ground them? That would turn them on as soon as the display receives power right?

You could take off the resistorpack, solder some wires to the pads going to the leds (or directly to the pads going to the resistorpack), solder a resistor to each wire (same value as the resistorpack), tie the other end of the resistors together and solder on another wire and connect this wire to either 5V or GND depending of which side of the leds this whole thing is connected to.

Stig

The flash of the LEDs when the level is set is a consequence of the original design. It happens. As for a level change causing the VFD level to change and stay dim, it sounds like the level setting data stream coming back to the dimmer are either being corrupted, or you are suffering from an extended version of the original "dimmer glitch" problem, probably exacerbated by the extention. Look at what the AS4800 dimmer chip does/receives for clues as to what is happening.

Although your prognosis makes perfect sense, I don't have the equipment or time to mess around with this anymore. I'd like to just wire the LED's to come on when the player comes on...

Sounds like to much work, I believe the resistor is connected to the anode of the LED. The cathode is connected to a pad on the board which is "signal" or a regulated ground to control the dimmer. Could I just lift the left pin where signal is connected (for the knob board) and just ground it?

Oh, I thought it was the resistorside that was controlled, not the other side of the leds (didn't have a displayboard at hand), so my suggestion wouldn't work... Yeah, should be possible to just ground the signalwire going to the knobboard. This time I did check a knobboard...

Stig

Ah, thanks... Could I just lift the pin that the signal wire is connected on on the LED and ground that? That would then light up the one LED and the knob board at power up correct?

Well, I was going to suggest that the easiest thing to do, albeit a bit drastic, would be to cut the track going to the topmost pin marked red in your picture (same as the signalwire going to the knobboard is connected to) and ground it, but I checked on a displayboard and the other 3 leds are connected together with a track which goes to a via coming up under a chip. I don't know if this is the PIC controlling the buttons (didn't want to bend open the vfd to look), would possibly have to cut this track too... So it's probably best to let Schofiel tell us what the best thing would be, which probably would be "Leave it alone"...

Stig

Well, I got impatient. It worked by just grounding each cathode of the button LED's and the signal wire for the knob board. Problem solved.