Hey Everyone,
I have an old home built pack (not by me) using an R2Devo light and sound kit and currently the lights and sounds aren’t working. I had a teammate help me troubleshoot some things but so far as we can tell we can’t identify the issue.
The electronics work off of 8 D Cell batteries, and so far as we can tell the power gets the needed 12v from the batteries all the way up to where it splits between the light board and the amp. Once it reaches them both the amp and the light board the voltage reads like ~1v, but we can’t figure out why.
Attached image is the electronics, left is the amp, middle is the light board, and right is the sound board. It all is ~13 years old, so it’s very possible that some part of it just may have outlived its lifespan.
Any ideas? Thanks!
I have zero experience with that light and sound kit, and the PDF instructions can apparently only be acquired by messaging Devin on Facebook.
But I have plenty of electronics and electrical experience generally. When you say…
“As we can tell the power gets the needed 12v from the batteries all the way up to where it splits between the light board and the amp. Once it reaches them both the amp and the light board the voltage reads like ~1v”
How are you performing this measurement? Because generally if you have 12V at the batteries but 1V at your components then there is likely a dead short somewhere that’s drawing insane current from the batteries and drooping the voltage (or you have very, very bad batteries). So for me, first thing I would do is disconnect the batteries from the electronics (looks like that’s easy to do for the middle board, but the amplifier will require desoldering at least 1 wire). Then measure how much voltage is actually going to those wires. If it’s still 1V then you have a short in your battery wiring and need to redo that wiring.
If you have 12V, then next step is to unplug all the electronics from each other (including unplugging the ethernet cable to the wand) and then plug one thing in at a time, starting with the middle board and a single light (either cyclotron or power cell). See if you still measure 12V or if it goes down to 1V. Then plug in the other light and measure again. Then plug in the wand connector and measure again. Assuming you get that far, plug in the sound board but not the amplifier and measure again. Then finally, if you get this far, remove power from both the sound board and the light board and resolder the power to the amplifier and measure again.
By doing testing a single component at a time you should be able to find whatever is bad, because the bad thing will cause your massive voltage drop problem to reappear.
Thanks for the reply!
The friend I had helping me with this used a multimeter to measure the voltage. We did disconnect from both the middle board and amp and tested those wires individually and the voltage seemed to be what we expected.
The testing one at a time testing you mention is definitely something we can try.
Another thing I forgot to mention on my initial post is that the middle board has a green LED on it (on the right just above the grey component and below the horizontal black component) which doesn’t light up. My friend seems to think that may indicate that the board is fried, though I think it could also be because not enough power is going that far in the circuit.
Without access to the manual describing how this kit works I have no way of knowing what that LED may or may not represent. For that I would recommend messaging Devin (the creator of the R2Devo kit) on Facebook as apparently he will send you a copy since you are a customer with one of his boards. If you want to be super cool you could even repost the PDF here on GBFans so that others might be able to see it too without going through Facebook.
Best of luck with the diagnostics; having a flowchart where you can rule out components one at a time is the best way to diagnose complex systems.
