LED is not working

Submitted by furusato on Sat, 12/07/2019 - 09:31

Forums:

Hi, I wasn't sure if I was to contact you directly or use the forum, but the site states that support issues should be addressed here...

I've got a functioning Thunderborg in that I can run tbReadBatteryStatus.py, tbSequence.py and the motors run fine. I can clearly communicate over I2C to the board, and until today I had a functioning LED that reacted to the GUI and provided a clear battery status indicator. Everything seemed fine.

I powered up the robot today and first there was only a red LED then after a reboot nothing. I've tried shutting down and rebooting, disconnecting the motors to see if that had any effect. Under no circumstances does the LED light up now. It's a relatively new board, only used a few times -- I'm still building the robot so it's not been used under load much at all.

I don't remember exactly what the LED looked like, but the blue LED portion looks a bit different, as if the plastic refracts different than the red and green parts.

Any ideas? I can't think what would burn out an LED, which to my understanding is after the power conditioning part of the board. I'm running the Thunderborg off of a 12 volt Makita power tool battery (which works quite well, so far).

piborg's picture

piborg

Sat, 12/07/2019 - 23:34

Unfortunately it sounds like the board has a faulty LED which would need to be replaced.

If you are happy to mail your board back to us we can send you a replacement. Do you know what your order number was?

furusato

Sun, 12/08/2019 - 03:48

It looks like it was order number 262348, of 5 November.

With the holidays coming up just curious how long it'll take for the round trip of return to replacement (I live in New Zealand)? I was planning to spend some of my spare time building out my robot project and it would be a shame to not have the motor driver during that time. Do I send it back to the address on the order in Cambridgeshire?

Thanks very much.

piborg's picture

piborg

Sun, 12/08/2019 - 11:11

No problem, I suggest we do the following.

We will send you out a replacement board tomorrow by airmail to the same address as your order. This usually takes 1~2 weeks to get to New Zealand.

You hold on to the faulty board for now and send it back to us once you have received the replacement. We do not need it back in a hurry, so cheaper shipping options are fine.

The full address for returns is:

Freeburn Robotics Limited
Unit 15, Earith Business Park
Meadow Drove
Earith
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire
PE28 3QF

That way you should have a functioning drive board the entire time, but hopefully you will have a fully functional replacement by Christmas :)

CyberGnome

Wed, 04/08/2020 - 10:29

Dear Piborg,

I've purchased a DiddyBorg v2 some time ago through MODMYPI (Order ID: 223657).
I've been using my confinement time to set it up again.
Unfortunately, the RGB LED of the included ThunderBorg is not working at all.
It does not light up on powering.
Its status can be polled and set using the ThunderBorg library, but it has no effect.
The motors however can be controlled fine.
I am using the standard powering setup with 10 LR6 provided with the DiddyBorg kit, so I do not expect any issue from that side.

I've tried rebooting, disconnecting/reconnecting the cables between the pi and the board, removing the battery pack and reconnecting it. The card shows no signs of burn or anything particular as far as I can tell.

As the issue seems to be similar to the one furusato had, I took the liberty of continuing the thread.

Could you please advise me how to proceed with this issue?

piborg's picture

piborg

Wed, 04/08/2020 - 18:20

No problem, we can send you out a replacement board :)

Send us a message using our contact form (category faulty item) and let us know the address to ship the replacement board to.

Shipping will take a little longer than normal at the moment, so I suggest you hold on to the faulty board for now so you have a working robot while you are waiting for the replacement to arrive.

Once you have received the replacement you will need to send the faulty board back to us. We do not need it back in a hurry, so cheaper shipping options are fine.

The full address for returns is:

Freeburn Robotics Limited
Unit 15, Earith Business Park
Meadow Drove
Earith
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire
PE28 3QF

CyberGnome

Wed, 04/22/2020 - 18:09

Dear Piborg,

Thanks a lot for your helpful reply! :) I just sent a message as suggested.

Side note: the contact form (category faulty item), does not offer the possibility to contact you and redirects to the forums (see enclosed screenshot). Hence, I used the direct contact form item (as suggested in the form).

Images: 
piborg's picture

piborg

Thu, 04/23/2020 - 10:48

Replacement board will be on its way later today.

Thanks for letting me know about the contact form :)

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