Aleph LCD help

[Nedavine]

My recently received aleph appears to be on the fritz (just as I finally got a grid for it as well). The LCD has gone rather dim (though it tends to go up and down in brightness). Anyone have any ideas? I hadn’t turned it on in a while turned it on today and was super dim.

It seems like ti might be power related as the more info on screen the dimmer it seems to get.

[tehn]

typically this is an issue with solder joints being a little cracked or compromised in the interconnects-- either the board-to-board connector on the right of the unit (most typical i’ve seen) or the OLED connector itself. note that each connector has two failure points, for each side of the connector. these “brown out” OLED issues i’ve seen two or three times in the past and have to do with the 3.3v connections being a little weak.

do you have a soldering iron? it’s pretty quick to reheat the joints, but it’s a moderate adventure to disassemble the aleph.

[Nedavine]

I literally finished soldering my grid kit 30 mins ago. Is there a technique for opening her up?

[tehn]

http://monome.org/docs/aleph/hardware/

get to step 12 and stop. leave the pcbs attached. just reheat all of the solder points on the long connector on the right, both the top side and bottom side. add solder if it seems thin.

then test, without putting the whole thing back together.

[Nedavine]

IT LIVES!!!

Thanks mate. All sorted. One of the joints had no solder whatsoever. However, hilariously that wasn’t the problem joint. Reflowed a few and now it’s back to normal. Thanks for the quick response.

[rick_monster]

is the underlying cause / repair procedure the same as this for the known ‘missing-line’ problem?

http://archive.monome.org/community/discussion/17735/missing-line-of-pixels-on-screen/p1

Mine had a missing line for a while now, but been too lazy/preoccupied to look into the repair…

[SYS2064]

I encountered the same issue some days ago and thanks to @tehn I resolved it in a flash. no solder needed, I only press the board-to-board connector that seems loose

[rick_monster]

just trying to fix a missing line on my aleph screen - got the thing in bits now, just tried wiggling/reseating the connectors. No joy there - next step reflow all the joints in the interconnect.

@tehn I can’t see the old site teardown - is [quote=“tehn, post:4, topic:4229”]
the long connector on the right
[/quote]
the connector to LCD itself or one of the interconnects between primary & int board?

EDIT: apologies I’m scatty today, the info I requested is in the original post…

Reflowed everything in sight, still seeing a dead line on my screen. Guessing the next step would be replace the screen?

[tehn]

if you are missing a line, sometimes manipilating the ribbon will fix the connection. but the screen may need to be replaced. i can post the part number soon.

[rick_monster]

Jotted down the part number of the screen when I had it in bits
http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/newhaven-display-intl/NHD-2.7-12864UCW3/NHD-2.7-12864UCW3-ND/6043943
seems there’s also a yellow version, easier to obtain in canada:
http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/newhaven-display-intl/NHD-2.7-12864UCY3/NHD-2.7-12864UCY3-ND/2640782
Assuming those parts would be electrically compatible…

[Galapagoose]

Functionally identical yes. I believe the white was a custom order with some minimum order quantity.

[rick_monster]

Think I found two companies holding the white displays in stock & willing to sell just one:

http://www.luna-displays.de/Graphic/128x64-Pixels/Newhaven-Display-NHD-2-7-12864UCW3-Graphic-OLED-128-x-64-pixels.html

http://www.elecok.com/nl/nhd-2-7-12864ucw3-newhaven-display-intl-graphic-lcd-display-module-white-oled-passive-matrix-parallel-serial-2-7-68-58mm-128-x-64.html

Might just switch to yellow anyway…

[tehn]

also for the aleph you’ll need a 0.1" 20 position header, something like this: http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?keywords=S1012EC-20-ND