Ice Tube Clock one row always lit Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

[jsownz]

Hey guys,

I read all the posts I could find that resembled this issue but nothing seemed to fit. If I happened to miss one by accident, please point me there and sorry for a double post!

I assembled my ice tube clock in a few hours, passed all voltage tests and had no problems at all. The clock works beautifully and keeps perfect time. My only problem is that a row in the tube is always lit, making a time such as "18 : 59 : 05" appear to have "68" for the minutes and "06" for the seconds. You can see this illustrated in the first photo, the other two photos show my solder connections.

clock-time.jpg (13.15 KiB) Viewed 1416 times

clock-board1.jpg (14.29 KiB) Viewed 1416 times

clock-board2.jpg (29.67 KiB) Viewed 1416 times

Any help would be very, very appreciated. Thanks a ton!

Jason

[adafruit_support_bill]

The more common problem is a segment that doesn't light due to a bad connection. In your case, the segment is always energized for all digits. It is possible that you have a short that keeps the VFD_E line permanently high. The short could be on the board, or in the tube itself.

The soldering looks pretty clean. With the tube board removed, can you measure continuity between the VDF_E pin and any other pins?

[jsownz]

Yes, I do appear to be getting continuity between VFD_E and the one directly across from it (VFD_C). I've looked at the solder points and they're very clean, not touching and no stray flux as far as I can tell...

[adafruit_support_bill]

Your soldering in that area looks very good. The short could be in the tube or the PCB. Contact support@adafruit.com for a replacement tube & side-PCB and include a link to this thread.

[jsownz]

Thank you very much!

[suicidaleggroll]

Hi,

I seem to be having the exact same problem as the OP. I built my kit about 2 months ago and it's been working great, then I woke up this morning and the bottom row of vertical segments is always lit (2 and 3 look the same, 4 looks like "H", 5 and 6 look the same, 9 looks like "A", etc). Is this a common problem? I can post photos of the soldering and the problem if you need.

Thanks,
Adam

[adafruit_support_bill]

Post photos of the front & back of the boards.

[suicidaleggroll]

I wanted to get a picture of the problem, however within 12 hours of noticing the problem and posting in this thread, it disappeared. It's now been about 10 days, and the problem still hasn't returned. I'll take some photos of the boards though, should be able to get to it tonight.