I purchased a set of 3 proffie cores from Padawan Outpost, mostly for parts for side projects. They are ‘issue’ boards that all have problems, but for now I’m attempting to troubleshoot one.
This one appears to be particularly confusing. It does not receive power at all; battery or usb. Doesn’t show up on my pc at all either. While I’m super familiar with surface mount electronic soldering, everything appears to be correctly placed and soldered on the board. I checked the SD card and it has soundfonts, though I’m unsure if a config file is actually uploaded to the board. Like I said, no connection to power or pc.
Any help or possible idea of the issue would be greatly appreciated.
The second appears to be slow and glitchy, but only sometimes. Usually it freezes after repeated blasters or clashes, but sometimes it crashes on an activation. Really does not like Kylo’s saber blasestyle. Might be a config thing, not really sure.
The third one is pretty scuffed.
Upon putting a charged battery in the core, the speaker sounds like its fried, though i have a feeling it isn’t. It sounds like the board isn’t getting enough juice, like when its receiving power through usb only. When i triple tap the button to access the spoken battery voltage, it’s all over the place. Usually it’s around 3-4 volts for my normal sabers, but I’ve heard it say anywhere from 0 to 22 volts which is… very incorrect. Not entirely sure whats up.
This points to slow SD card.
You could run sdtest and post the results.
You could also try removing the SD and test. If visuals are snappier with no SD card in (of course no sound then), try a reformat or different card.
Meter if you have 5V on the 5V pad when the blade is ignited and sound is playing.
If not, try jumping the BATT(+) pad to the 5V pad. If the sound clears up, your booster is bad. You can leave it like that, you may or not perceive a slightly reduced volume, but it should be clean.
As for the battery readings… I would upload a fresh, latest OS and see if it persists.
I tested the 5v pad and it was running about 2v, so I bridged it. Audio cleaned right up.
however
The solder bridge between the two gets extremely hot, to a concerning level. Not sure what’s up.
EDIT: so uh, I was wrong
I unsoldered the bridge and tried it again, but this time the audio was fine? I guess the original battery+ pad wasn’t soldered correctly and the board wasn’t getting enough power. Or something.