So my brother got me this cool 8-bit gaming device which you build up from scratch. I'm not exactly well versed in circuitry etc. so it took me about 2 hours to do but this thing is pretty ace. Thought some of you lot might be interested in it so here's the album on Facebook (should be public so everyone can see). It runs off an Arduino chip which slots on the bottom. https://www.facebook.com/Weasei/media_set?set=a.10152040311916357.1073741830.538296356&type=3 Hope to post videos of it once I've uploaded something decent to it. Currently it has Snake.
Okay got some basics on film. Sorry these aren't beautifully embedded but I'm too tired to put them on YouTube tonight. You will notice that the right-hand column of the LED display doesn't work. I believe this is due to a damaged socket as I am unable to find any continuity from the socket to the circuit board on just that one socket. Anyone with a little more experience of such things feel free to suggest solutions! First I played a bit of Breakout: Then I made an animation of a triforce flashing:
Yep, our site rocks. ;D Troubleshooting.... I'd try and apply power to that right-hand column manually somehow, test it out. Use a little button cell, or maybe use wire to connect the not-working column to the pin for a working column -- with the rest of the display unplugged to avoid any shorts. Is this picture an accurate view of the sockets under that display? Those kind of sockets are fairly foolproof. Could be a bad solder joint, make sure it's making good connection. Looks like two sockets for the display - one should represent the columns and one the rows. The pin for that column is probably the only bad spot in the entire thing since you've just got exactly one row out. If you had a spare LED you could connect it between that column pin and any of the row pins to test. Of course, you'll need a program running that will light everything up for you to know for sure. I'm leaning towards defective display or one bad solder joint, really.
Saib, in that picture, the sockets are the two single rows shown below the large orange plastic casing. They are soldered in the two horizontal lines of connections above and below where it says 'DISPLAY' on the board. I used some wire to connect the row in question between two working connectors, then between each of the non-working connectors and an opposite one that does work. From this I can identify that the faulty connection is the top right connection, which also has no continuity from the socket to the solder on the other side of the board so I suspect it's a bad solder. I had some issues with this when assembling it and fear I may have fried that part of the board to create a gap.
You might be able to follow the trace back from the socket to the previous component in the circuit, then solder a jumper from there to the base of the socket.
I'm not sure if that will work as there is no continuity from the pin to the board. Possibly if I got a jumper from the top of the socket to the previous component it could work though. I'll have a look at that when I get a moment, working from home at the moment and it's a lot of work.
