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lights too dim on AudioArts R5 board?

canadave

canadave

Hi all,

For a long time, the folks here at my small town community radio station have just kind of "lived with" the fact that the status lights on our Audioarts R5 radio board are very, very dim. Especially with any kind of sunlight, it's very difficult to tell at a glance whether a light is on or off.

Now, our station manager went on a conference a little while ago to a station where they have the exact same R5 board, and he was shocked at how bright and easy-to-see that the lights on their board were. He unfortunately wasn't able to talk to the technical people there at the time, but we just were able to send them a note and ask about whether they'd modified their board somehow. They replied and said they hadn't, but they thought that perhaps in our case, our board wasn't receiving enough voltage.

Does that sound plausible as a reason why the lights would be dim on our board? I looked at our power supply just now, and all of its four status LED lights are lit, and it seems to be working just fine. I'm more of a computer tech than a radio tech, so I don't know what else I can do to test this and try to get our lights brighter. Does anyone have any tips or ideas they might be able to share?

Thanks!
 
frankberry said:
Perhaps you are using the incorrect bulb type.
Click to expand...
I suppose that's possible, but we haven't done any modifications to the board, so whatever bulbs are in it came from the manufacturer :(
 
Does that sound plausible as a reason why the lights would be dim on our board? I looked at our power supply just now, and all of its four status LED lights are lit, and it seems to be working just fine. I'm more of a computer tech than a radio tech, so I don't know what else I can do to test this and try to get our lights brighter. Does anyone have any tips or ideas they might be able to share?

Yes, it is plausible. Most likely your PS is not putting out the correct voltage. If you have your manual it should tell you what the voltages should be. Measure the output and see if it is correct. Sometimes the voltage will measure OK, but on load (that is when the the board is connected to the PS) the voltages will sag.

BH
 
whonigs said:
Does that sound plausible as a reason why the lights would be dim on our board? I looked at our power supply just now, and all of its four status LED lights are lit, and it seems to be working just fine. I'm more of a computer tech than a radio tech, so I don't know what else I can do to test this and try to get our lights brighter. Does anyone have any tips or ideas they might be able to share?

Yes, it is plausible. Most likely your PS is not putting out the correct voltage. If you have your manual it should tell you what the voltages should be. Measure the output and see if it is correct. Sometimes the voltage will measure OK, but on load (that is when the the board is connected to the PS) the voltages will sag.

BH
Click to expand...
Interesting :) Sounds like a definite possibility. Pardon my ignorance, but how would I go about measuring the voltage output from the power supply? (a Wheatstone PS-6040)
 
Long shot, but worth a check.

Any possibility the console is wired for 230VAC but is being used on 115VAC?

I was checking a BE console at a foreign location, and one of the symptoms was erratic operation of the muting relay. I figured I’d look at that after I ran some checks on the channels. Found that I could not get near rated output power on the line output before it started clipping.

Checked the console specs and found it was a 230VAC console, appropriate for the location, but someone years earlier, because it had a regular US style plug, had powered the console from a step-down transformer.

Plugging the console into 230VAC solved the clipping problem and the muting relay problem.
 
RadioFan2J3 said:
Long shot, but worth a check.

Any possibility the console is wired for 230VAC but is being used on 115VAC?

I was checking a BE console at a foreign location, and one of the symptoms was erratic operation of the muting relay. I figured I’d look at that after I ran some checks on the channels. Found that I could not get near rated output power on the line output before it started clipping.

Checked the console specs and found it was a 230VAC console, appropriate for the location, but someone years earlier, because it had a regular US style plug, had powered the console from a step-down transformer.

Plugging the console into 230VAC solved the clipping problem and the muting relay problem.
Click to expand...

Good idea, but no, it's a 120V board. At least that's what the manual says :)
 
Not familiar with this board, but could the panel lights all rely on a common ground bus--and there is a break, or poor connection on that ground return?

Those with a schematic at hand could check this out.
 
TomT said:
Not familiar with this board, but could the panel lights all rely on a common ground bus--and there is a break, or poor connection on that ground return?

Those with a schematic at hand could check this out.
Click to expand...
I have a manual that contains schematics (anyone interested can check it out here: http://www.audioartsengineering.com/download-document/168-r-5-owner-s-manual.html), but unfortunately none of us here have electrical engineering degrees :) Is this something that the average semi-intelligent computer nerd such as myself might be able to figure out with a hint or two?
 
The console uses LEDs for the switch illumination. It's possible, but not likely, that the wrong dropping resistors got stuffed in the motherboard.

The power supply can be jumpered for 230-volt operation. That might cause an issue with the LED voltage supply if the jumpers are not set correctly for your house voltage, which I believe you indicated was 120VAC.

You could try metering some of the voltages in the console with a digital volt meter if you are comfortable with doing that. I would recommend that you talk with someone at Wheatstone/Audioarts tech support before you do anything along those lines. They might have a simple solution to the problem.
 
I am fairly familiar with this board. I worked on a couple of them that had gotten hit by lightning. The power supply is a seperate unit that probably is mounted in a rack below the board. It should have 4 LED lights on the front of the power supply indicating it's creating the proper voltages. First, look at those LED lights to see if one is out or very dim. Then, check the manual for a pinout of the cable that connects the power supply to the board. Use a multimeter to check that the voltages are correct going into the board. If they are more than about .5 volts incorrect, you may have a problem in the power supply.

I would doubt that any of the board components have been changed because the resistors are tiny SMT style resistors and capacitors. So check the power supply voltages first and then let us know what you find.
 
awsherrill said:
The console uses LEDs for the switch illumination. It's possible, but not likely, that the wrong dropping resistors got stuffed in the motherboard.

The power supply can be jumpered for 230-volt operation. That might cause an issue with the LED voltage supply if the jumpers are not set correctly for your house voltage, which I believe you indicated was 120VAC.

You could try metering some of the voltages in the console with a digital volt meter if you are comfortable with doing that. I would recommend that you talk with someone at Wheatstone/Audioarts tech support before you do anything along those lines. They might have a simple solution to the problem.
Click to expand...

Yep, I've been in touch with Audioarts, and they don't have a clue what could be wrong :) The only thing we did discover in the course of our investigation via email was that nothing is attached to the board's grounding lugs--apparently no one ever bothered to ground the board. The Audioarts tech thought it was possible, but unlikely, that the lack of grounding would cause the issue. We'll probably wind up bringing someone in to ground the board (although it's probably going to wait some time, given that we've been operating for 5 years without any issues, and we're hard up for money right now), but does anyone think the lack of grounding might cause this?
 
If board being ungrounded was causing dim lights, you'd probably experience brightness fluctuations when an operator touched the board and something nearby that was properly grounded.
 
Lazy J said:
I am fairly familiar with this board. I worked on a couple of them that had gotten hit by lightning. The power supply is a seperate unit that probably is mounted in a rack below the board. It should have 4 LED lights on the front of the power supply indicating it's creating the proper voltages. First, look at those LED lights to see if one is out or very dim. Then, check the manual for a pinout of the cable that connects the power supply to the board. Use a multimeter to check that the voltages are correct going into the board. If they are more than about .5 volts incorrect, you may have a problem in the power supply.

I would doubt that any of the board components have been changed because the resistors are tiny SMT style resistors and capacitors. So check the power supply voltages first and then let us know what you find.
Click to expand...
Thanks. The four LED status lights on the power supply are fine and equally bright to each other. We haven't been hit by lightning, but we HAVE had a small handful of power outages in the past.

I'll bring my multimeter in on Monday when I'm back at the station and see if we can't measure some things. I have to admit I'm not sure what you mean by measuring "a pinout of the cable that connects the power supply to the board." Are you saying we need to unplug the power supply from the board and check the cable? If so, we can't do that (well, I'd gladly do it, but my station manager would kill me for taking us off the air). Remember, I'm not an electrical guy in the slightest (my only real electrical experience was as a kid with a Radio Shack electrics set), so I'm not entirely sure how to do what I think you're asking. Are you saying that we should check the manual, see which pins in the cable from the power supply to the board carry voltage, and then apply the multimeter to those pins and verify that the voltage displayed is what it should be?
 
Hmmmm. Another interesting thing I just noticed, in looking at the board in full light. There are yellow "Off" lights across the bottom of the board for the various inputs and outputs. The last three stereo line inputs on our board have "U/S" handwritten in marker below each one of them, the fader plastic pieces have been removed, and a sticker marked "NO" has been placed above the fader blade. In other words, when this was set up, someone didn't want us to use these :)

In looking at the yellow "Off" lights for these three stereo line inputs, they are BRIGHT yellow--discernably brighter than the yellow lights for the rest of the line inputs.

I also notice that one of the mic inputs has a yellow "Off" light that is dimmer, noticeably, than any of the other yellow lights.

So it's not just "all the lights are equally dim" across the board. There are some that are dimmer than others, even among the same type of light.
 
On page 94 of the manual there is a diagram of the power supply pinout. But, you will have to unplug the board to check the voltages. If the manager won't allow you to unplug the board, then you are pretty well stuck with some dim lights. I'm pretty confident that the problem has nothing to do with the ground lugs (the two lugs under the meter bridge).
 
Looks like the LED lights run off a 5 volt buss that also powers some logic (the LED's on the switches are turned on/off by a transistor). The audio is powered by +18/-18 rails, presumably 3 pin regulators on the cards to drop down to a more conventional +/- 15.

Either a problem with the +5 rail or a board wired for 208/240 service would both be plausible explanations.
 
Earlier, someone mentioned the possibility that the bulbs may have been replaced with ones of the wrong voltage-higher voltage bulbs would indeed glow more dimly). You've noticed that there are some bulbs that appear brighter. Would your manager allow you to swap the bulbs from the brighter buttons into the dimmer ones? This should help rule out the bulbs themselves as the cause of your trouble. You should be able to do this without having to take the board off-line.

Maybe not likely, but heat can cause some plastics to darken, check the bulb covers for discoloration or cloudiness.
 
Scratch the above about swapping bulbs. I missed the post about the board using LEDs in the buttons. It's also very unlikely that LEDs would generate enough heat to affect the plastic.
 
Replaced a couple LED indicators on a console that's been in operation for about ten years.
New ones were noticably brighter. These were not new replacements but spares that have
set around for 10 years.
 
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