I've just ordered one of these to evaluate it as a viable level controller for a Hi-Fi build.
Anyone with any experience of these kits is welcome to put in their ten penny worth.
I'll be using it to substitute a ladder attenuator in a Pass B1, Pass Aleph 4 combination.
I'll be surprised if it comes up to expectations but you never know.
The first thing is the wild variation in the cost of this kit. I've seen it from £19 to over £40 for what seems on the outside to be exactly the same kit.
F6 - PGA2311 remote control preamp kit | eBay
Anyone with any experience of these kits is welcome to put in their ten penny worth.
I'll be using it to substitute a ladder attenuator in a Pass B1, Pass Aleph 4 combination.
I'll be surprised if it comes up to expectations but you never know.
The first thing is the wild variation in the cost of this kit. I've seen it from £19 to over £40 for what seems on the outside to be exactly the same kit.
F6 - PGA2311 remote control preamp kit | eBay
Well the kit arrived yesterday and I eagerly attacked it with the soldering iron.
Although I religously checked all the resistors I did not check the 4 resistor arrays. The schematic says 4 x 4K7x8 unfortunately the kit had 1 x 10Kx8 and 3 x 4K7x8.
It took me all morning to get the 10K out and now I've got to wait for a 4K7x8.
It would probably work OK with the 10K but I don't want to take any chances.
Although I religously checked all the resistors I did not check the 4 resistor arrays. The schematic says 4 x 4K7x8 unfortunately the kit had 1 x 10Kx8 and 3 x 4K7x8.
It took me all morning to get the 10K out and now I've got to wait for a 4K7x8.
It would probably work OK with the 10K but I don't want to take any chances.
Well I plugged it in today and got loads of blue smoke.
Now, I'm a seasoned constructor and an engineer so it wasn't something utterly stupid I'd done.
The kit comes with NO instructions. You have to simply insert the components into the board as indicated on the board !!!!
No mistakes, everything as per the silk screen printing - what could be wrong me thinks.
I get out my trusty multimeter and start to investigate.
The 4 diodes of the bridge are correctly inserted by why is the 7805 being fed with -ve supply and the 7905 being fed with +ve.
Turns out that the silk screen layer is in fact incorrect and the diodes are the wrong way round. After the blue smoke I'm surprised that the three regulators were still working.
Which way round do the caps go ? Most guys mark the +ve end of each cap - not this kit, he's marked the -ve end.
Well, I've stopped the blue smoke, all I need to do now is stop the LED flashing and get it to work. It's stuck on -46dB, that may be because I haven't fitted the IR receiver, but I'd have thought it would work with the fixed controller ?
Now, I'm a seasoned constructor and an engineer so it wasn't something utterly stupid I'd done.
The kit comes with NO instructions. You have to simply insert the components into the board as indicated on the board !!!!
No mistakes, everything as per the silk screen printing - what could be wrong me thinks.
I get out my trusty multimeter and start to investigate.
The 4 diodes of the bridge are correctly inserted by why is the 7805 being fed with -ve supply and the 7905 being fed with +ve.
Turns out that the silk screen layer is in fact incorrect and the diodes are the wrong way round. After the blue smoke I'm surprised that the three regulators were still working.
Which way round do the caps go ? Most guys mark the +ve end of each cap - not this kit, he's marked the -ve end.
Well, I've stopped the blue smoke, all I need to do now is stop the LED flashing and get it to work. It's stuck on -46dB, that may be because I haven't fitted the IR receiver, but I'd have thought it would work with the fixed controller ?
I may be paranoic but I have learnt to check the silk screen printing against the schematics while soldering (after similar experience ;-). Looks like the polarity is Ok now if the LCD shows -46dB. The caps orientation should match the regulators (+ on +). The caps are usually marked (or the longer lead is +V), you better check the traces on PCB to get them in correctly. This should not be too complicated as they make the PS filtering only. What happens if you rotate the encoder? The shaft push button is often used to switch the control modes (from volume control to input selector or some other preset). At least the display of the mcu should react (which does not mean necessarily that it sends correct signals to the pga or relays or the pga has not eventually died by the false polarity ;-). It is very unusual that missing IR receiver would block the mcu processing...
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