DIY: norns shield

[coolcat]

I was able to make an order on RS as a private customer, but then they cancelled and said they need VAT. Maybe it depends on country.

[coolcat]

Hi all, I have volume variations on my Shield (self assembled). Do you know what could case it? Codec, crystal, Pi, power supply (I use official Raspberry 2.5A, should be ok), connected devices?

[tomw]

Message me if you can’t find one. I think I have some spare.

[arev]

well so two things: rs-online is also only business as @coolcat mentioned and I almost blindly ordered the CS4272 through university but I just realized that’s a whole different codec with differential outputs and more pins

[okyeron]

I previously ordered from rs-online and they didn’t ask for anything that specifies it’s “business” only. Just ordered from the website.

Fwiw - they did screw up my order and I had to cancel it so I guess your mileage may vary.

[shambolic]

there are some on e-bay:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/24021430055

[ruimiguel]

Hello.
The output of my shield became noisy.
Is anyone with this isse?
Any help please?
Thank you

[alley_cam]

What kind of noise are you experiencing? Is it a high pitched whine? Any USB devices plugged in?

If so, it is most likely USB noise which can be remedied with one of these https://www.expressivee.com/14-ground-loop-adaptor

[ruimiguel]

Thank you Alley. It is like a isstsssissttttsss…
But i only ear when no Script is running. In silence.
Let me try.
Could be any demage in the output?
Cheers

[alley_cam]

Is it running into a mixer and then headphones? Where is the shield from? Was it a kit from monome or from somewhere else?

[ruimiguel]

Hello Alley. Everything is ok now. Unpluged all the usb cables, and its fine!
Now i have to get the adapter to reduce the noise when i connect any usb device.
Thank you again!

[bob_ross]

Fresh build from known good batch of boards (not monome mfg).

Encoder 2 isn’t acknowledged - replaced encoder and still doesn’t function - everything looks correct. And everything else works. This is not my first build.

Anyone else successfully troubleshoot non-working encoder 2 where encoder is not the issue?

Are there are any known tests i can perform to detect why known good encoder isn’t working while other components and supporting passives for the encoder seem to be correctly installed?

[corpusjonsey]

@bob_ross

known good batch of boards

How do you know this?

[kbra]

I suppose you have a basic multimeter handy? One option is to use the board / image / schematics in Github to check where the on the RPi header that particular encoder is hooked to, and use a multimeter to trace back from there.

(I suppose the initial brute force option is to first reflow the whole RPi header and see if that fixes the issue, as it might be a connection issue between the shield and RPi. But if that doesn’t work, I suppose it’d be best to check where the signals from that encoder should go to, and measure whether they are actually connected to where they should be)

[bob_ross]

Update to the above encoder issue:

Re-flow of Pi connector fixed it

Thanks!

[alext]

i’m not super familiar with the norns environment, but i didn’t notice changes in output levels until i made similar changes in ~/norns/lua/core/audio.lua:

monome/norns/blob/main/lua/core/audio.lua#L260-L266

i then set mix.lua back to 0db and it seems the volume boost exists still. so i am just curious, what exactly do the changes to mix.lua do? matron also seems to report -inf for mix:get("output") always

[ecso]

I just finished building my shield and I may have accidentally switched the caps at C17 and C36. They moved while I was reflowing so I set them aside and made sure to keep them apart and I’m probably being paranoid but I want to know for sure before I go any further. I’ve been scouring YouTube for something to help me figure this out with my cheap multimeter, but nothing has really cleared it up for me. How can I make sure they’re in the right spots?

[alley_cam]

If you ordered the same caps from the BOM you will notice a difference in color between the two. C36 is the same cap that is used throughout all the encoder and switch areas, more of a yellow hue which will match the others.

C17, near the output section will appear more white in hue and will match C15.

[ecso]

Thank you! They’re both in the right spot. Looking forward to finishing this!

[tehn]

thanks for the heads up— i think mix.lua is stale. everything should be handled in audio.lua — i’ll clean it up: https://github.com/monome/norns/issues/1232