Haptic and Speaker mod on radios with collector piezo

[jhsa]

That's why I asked for a picture.. It is much easier, at least for me, to see a short with a good picture than with a magnifier....

[ShowMaster]

I'm pretty sure the resistance raise from 6K to 12K is because your measuring a cap and its resistance goes up as the meters voltage charges it and is normal. Try reversing the meter leads and see what you read. Also select a new unused mix and see if that stops the stick interaction. I thought I got caught on that way back with some setting in the menus I missed.
Just brainstorming so a picture will be best.
Make sure your stick connectors are fully seated as well?


ShowMaster
Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

[ShowMaster]

FWIW
About the haptic and speaker mod.
I find that the stock buzzer is good enough compared to the Piezo speaker mod that I've quit doing it. Down side is not having use of that circuit to drive the haptic device from pin 43.
I duplicated the circuit using a 2n3409 I had and now I have both features without major mods being done to the switchboard no matter the version. I posted the circuit I used but i'll have to search for it.
It's the same as the switchboards circuit that has the haptic device and diode in the emmiter circuit. I also in the future will add the extra 22-47ufd cap across the 5v input line that's now added to the switchboards 5v regulator for added voltage stabilization. I'm making a few spares to be ready for future mods.
It also kiss if I'm going to add the voice option later.




ShowMaster
Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

[Spoogy]

Okay I'm back.

And as Mike advised I checked that there is no any short between pin 60 and 61. You can ccount on this.

BUT. Now I have reversed everything what I have done. Before that I downloaded latest "normal" Open9x for stock board and flashed it into the radio. Then I un-solder everything. I soldered those two 200R SMD resistors back to their place. Except I did not found another original one anymore so, I replaced that with 470R (does it matter? I think not). I soldered a jumpwire in that circuit board where is a speaker and where I had to cut a trace for the speaker mod. I even removed the backlight from the radio. Only thing what I haven't undone is fixing those traces around the transmitter module connector pins, but as we know it doesn't matter. Transmitter module has not been connected on the radio at any moment since these problems has begun..

And I have been measuring all the atmega legs and there is no shorts anywhere as far as I can see (I can still take a photo - shortly). But still no joy. And there's even more problems now:

- Speaker doesn't make any noise.
- AilDR and Throttle cut doesn't work.
- Three position switch seems to work so, that ID0 and ID1 is ok. ID2 shows on diagnostic screen as ID0 BUT when I turn on gear switch then it turns to ID2. And if I remember Gear switch doesn't turn on until the three position switch is on ID1 or ID2.
- Throttle stick movement makes ailerons move also and vise versa.
- Pots behaves oddly. Sometimes they calibrate okay but sometimes one pot moves two colums (makes another pot to move) and sometimes thay vary even I don't touch them.

Those are the problems.

I have measured allmost everything what I can. Atmega itself, pots, switches, buttons and connections between those. And I have re-solder some connectors just to make sure that there is no "cold" soldering anywhere.

Only thing that really works at the moment is all push buttons, eledr and trn switch. Originally all the switches worked but suddenly something happened. Also all pots worked fine at the very begining but also those has been "unstable" now.

And everything started so, that I made frsky and haptic/speaker mod. Then I upgraded frsky_haptic version of Open9x to the radio. Then I went to the setup menu and set some settings (backlight contrast, filtering mode and sometehing else). Then I wanted to test speaker and I changed something conserning about that (turned it on and shange pitch or something like that). Then suddenly it begun adjust the settings by itself. scrolled down and put some different values in there even that I wasn't touching anywhere.

I turned the radio off, turned it on again, went to the calibration menu and there I noticed that throttle moves ailerons. I still did that calibration and then I went to the diagnostic screen. Everything else worked (all the switches and all the pots) except that throttle moved ailerons. After that it has been gone much much worse.

BUT I have another radio which is working. I will now do so that I switch the PCB where is AtMega. Let's see if that fixes this damn thing.

edit: just noticed that trims doesn't work also and elevator trim jumps to up when I move throttle.

[jhsa]

Can it get any worse??

Did you try to reflash the FW? maybe try both of them open9x and er9x
Use eepe to flash er9x..

[Kilrah]

Are you sure all the connectors on the board are connected correctly, not swapped/shifted?

[Spoogy]

Yes I'm pretty damn sure they are all fixed as should be. I know how they should be and I also have this another, working radio here.

I have re-flashed firmware many, many, many times now with different options and still no go or joy. Now I cannot do it at the moment, because I do not have wiring harness connected anymore (I unsolder everything).

I don't know if radio was broken at the originally because I didn't testit until I did the modifications. BUT one thing what I can see compared to that working radio is that one chip which is lower left corner on processor PCB has been re-soldered by hand. It was that way when I received transmitter.

ALSO what I noticed immediately when I opened the radio at the very first time that on throttle pot circuit board those black and white wires are soldered to the background (to visible side) of the board. On working radio they are soldered as should be, from backside through the holes as normally.

All these gives me a signal that maybe this new radio has been returned from customer and fixed, but noboby hasn't really tested it.

But anyway, I got the speaker working now. I begun to swap the boards between radios and noticed that I had soldered the original speaker element wrong way. I turned it and now it's peeping again (annoying noise).

But I think I have to make a video before I swap the board. This is so hilarious how the radio behaves.

[Kilrah]

Are you sure you never wired anything wrong when you did the different mods?
If you for example did a short, or wired something wrong even temporarily it could have fried the processor's input ports causing unpredictable mess...
Just trying to make sure you don't have a wiring mistake somewhere, and fry the 2nd board when connecting it

[Spoogy]

No need to be scared that something is now wired wrong because all mods has been removed.

Of course I cannot be 100% sure that something wasn't wrong at the time when all mods was connected. But I did measured everything and all looked good.

I made the video about the situation at the moment. I'm sorry about my bad english pronouncing, blurry picture and littlebit misshot video picture. I did use little key chain camera and it didn't have as wide angle as I thought.

Video will be available in here -> http://youtu.be/gSnnM1tIaSI


edit: I swapped the processor board from broken to working radio. Now I can confirm that it's the board which is not working. I will now solder the wiring harness back, so I can update the firmware. Wan't to try to solve this until I give up. Any help is appreciated.

edit2: I think if something went wrong it has to be speaker/haptic mod. Because all these started when I touched speaker settings in setup menu.

[ReSt]

When you checked the switches, did you also measure the resistance of the ground wire to the ground of the board.
To be sure, that you do not have a broken ground wire.

Reinhard

[Spoogy]

No I didn't and that's a good catch. I have to check those because now I got the sticks working properly. I don't know what I did. I just took the processor PCB on the table and went trough every solder point and re-solder those. Even all of the AtMega pins. I also measured all resistors that they work and shows proper resistance (of course some of those was impossible measure while attached on the board, but I checked it conducts anyway).

I also got pots working somehow. Now they calibrate independently(?) but when I fire up the transmitter and after a couple second some of the four trim will move spontaneously and same time the pots may react on that. They begin to vary.

I see that there is a hope.....

edit: Ouh I re-read your post and realised that you talked about ground wiring.... As I mentioned earlier I switched the whole processor circuit board to another radio which is working. When I did that I got the same symptoms in that radio. So, the reason is the main board only. Or if I may say it other way that if there is a fix, it has to be inside of "motherboard" because that is where the problem(s) lies.

Now I'm swapping that working PCB to this new radio. Let's hope that any component of it doesn't broke this board.

[Spoogy]

I changed the board and noticed that throttle pot is gone. It doesn't work properly. Have to change that also. Everything else is now working as should be.

edit: does anybody know how to dismantle throttle gimball? How to get pot shaft (axle) out from there?

[jhsa]

Showmaster did repair one of the pots.. I'm sure he will jump in and post a link to how he did it.. and if it is not in the wiki, it should also be posted there.. I could try to do that tonight..
@Showmaster. Any pictures also?

[Spoogy]

I tried to dismantle that but with no succee. I only broke the pot itself but it was broke already so it doesn't matter. But I still like to know how to do that. I got some spares here now.

Anyway. This new radio what I got was a little bit broken at the very begining and there was lots of bad soldering here and there. And I even found couple rusty screws from that radio. I should have tested it more detailed first, before I begun to make modifications. But I would not send it back anyways because of the shipping fees. These radios are soooooo cheap so, I could just by another one.

But I really like the black casing and that new 3-position switch which is with flat lever so I transfered my old processor PCB and throttle gimball with the trims to this new radio and now it works flawlessly.

Now I'm going to do again that FrySky modification. The transmitter module and the backboard is already done. I will ask more details and upload some pictures while doing BEFORE I test anything on more suitable discussion thread. This case is closed for now. Lets get back to this after a frysky mod, if I like to try speaker/haptic mod again. Thank you all for your support!!

[ShowMaster]

Showmaster did repair one of the pots.. I'm sure he will jump in and post a link to how he did it.. and if it is not in the wiki, it should also be posted there.. I could try to do that tonight..
@Showmaster. Any pictures also?

No pictures and I regret it. It was late and I had just fixed it after a friend reversed his battery and I was checking it all out. If anyone else I help has a pot issue I'll take pictures this time. As with all these types of major disassembly one has to possess the ability to not break off he metal pot shell tabs. They only unbend and bent a few times in their life and then they break off. Crimping the pot element ends are also a one or two time event and very brittle.
I never tried it but in past posts here or RCG others have used the $20 silver conductive paint pen from radio shack and the less expensive car window heater wire conductive epoxy that's lower priced and sold at auto parts stores. That person on RCG did have pictures and how to info. I'll look for it and maybe can add my fix to his as well.
SM

[jhsa]

that'd be great.. at least a link.. thanks..