#1671

The 4th encoder on your design. As I understand this encoder works only in orac or in scripts supporting this encoder. (mine doesn’t do anything in orac. changes nothing, is completely dead no jitters, nothing). I un-commented the enc4 code still didn’t change anything.

#1672

I’d say check your soldering on enc4 and the pi header. There’s not much that can go wrong there. I’ll post a pic in a minute.

Screen Shot 2020-05-08 at 1.07.24 PM

Also - you can confirm that /boot/config.txt has the following

# Buttons and encoders
#dtoverlay=fates-buttons-encoders

# Alternate overlay for 4 encoders
dtoverlay=fates-buttons-4encoders

So this means the 4 encoder overlay is being used and not the 3 enc.

#1673

no need. i know the pcb :slight_smile: i wanted to make another one… but to lazy. checked the soldering its not that. although i didn’t check the rpi header…

#1674

I own the latest GRID, but got an older version of the GRID.

When I connected this grid to Fates, it seems to work differently than the latest grid.
Is there any way to fix this?

Fates has been updated to fates200218.
Thank you.

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#1676

which edition is the not-lit-up one? https://monome.org/docs/grid/editions/

m128-421 makes me think it’s a “series” which I think is a mono-bright model. If that’s the case, the some scripts wont work as exepcted because they are designed for vari-bright grids.

You might also consider updating norns software (although it won’t fix this particular issue)
https://github.com/fates-project/norns/releases

#1677

So, the older grid you have looks like a grayscale from around 2010. I have the same one. These were mono-brightness, meaning the LED’s are only ON or OFF.

Along the way, a variable brightness standard came along, allowing for gradients.

If you feel up for a) waiting and b) soldering/diy a user on the thread has been working on a personal project that would allow you to upgrade the driver of the LED’s and the firmware of your grid. I personally can’t wait, as I LOVE the white LED’s of the grayscale.

Check out this thread and let him know you’re interested.

In the meantime; one fix you can do is to actually reprogram the norns scripts yourself. I’m not great at this, but if you have an LED be 16 instead of any other number, it shows up.

#1678

Thank you for the useful information.

Indeed, the grid I got seems to be an on-off only LED.

Unfortunately I’m not an English speaker and those hurdles are high, so I’d like to find other uses for them.

Thank you all so much for being so polite.

#1680

maybe a dumb question…
I have a Fates with a 32GB SD Card.
I am trying to update it but if fails, telling me taht it needs 400MB.
I deleted many samples I had uploaded, still the same error when updating.
Does the system have some sort of “thrash” bin I need to empty? I believe a 32 GB card should be more than enough for it…

#1681

You might need to expand the file system, it happened to me as well.

You can find info about it on this thread or in the github documentation of this project

#1683

does anyone know why my fates would fail to power up properly all of a sudden? this morning i powered it on and the red light came on as usual but the screen remained blank. i tried to connect via ssh and it wouldn’t connect. tried rebooting and nothing happened.

I flashed the micro sd card to see if that would work and this time, when i powered it on immediately after inserting the newly flashed sd card, the red power light kind of dimly lit, faded out a little, then slowly lit up to the normal brightness, but still no display. just a black screen. I’m not sure what this could be or what to do about it.

any advice would be very helpful

EDIT: now, every time i power it on, the red light will not light up for about a second or two, then it slowly lights up

Aright, i don’t know what i did but i took it apart, reflowed some solder on encoder two because i’ve been wanting to fix the jumpy knob action, then put it back together and it worked again. we’ll see if it stays that way. i was just about to start building my diy grid, so that was about to be very infuriating

EDIT #3. it wouldnt connect to wifi or work with an ethernet cable connected so i was unable to install anything or even get to the expand filesystem stage. so i re-flashed it and now im back to no display.

why would the power indicator led be slowly fading in and out?

#1684

I thought I had already expanded, but I probably reinstalled everything lately and forgot to expand. The expansion did the trick, thanks!

1 Like
#1685

I have a really beefy USBC power supply (2.5 amps), fates, and neo-grid. I also have a powered Anker USB C hub. Powering the Fates via USBC means the PI has to power all peripherals, and it just doesn’t cut it with the neotrellis’s current requirements - even at low intensities. Things get worse when I add a Komplete midi keyboard. How the hell do you connect/power a fates, a bright neotrellis-grid, and a midi keyboard? Just can’t figure out the topology. Maybe draw me a friggin picture? Feeling inept here!

#1686

I’ve been seeing something weird with ISB stuff plugged in causing the screen to go black.

First step if something like this happens - unplug all usb devices from the pi.

Still no idea what’s causing this, but will try to track it down.

Powered usb hub?

#1687

that seems to be it. i dont know why i didnt realize it at first, but yeah right now its working because i removed everything, including the bluetooth keyboard dongle from the ports. thank you

#1688

I added an internal battery to my Fates, thought I should document the process here.

Caveats:

  • This is not a simple build. I found it fairly quick, but it involves SMD desoldering, drilling out the PCB, physically modifying a lipo battery, desoldering an encoder and a USB port. I’m pretty confident with all those things, if you’re not, I would not recommend doing this the way I’ve done it!
  • I did it this morning and haven’t done any long-term testing or tested how long the battery will last. I think it’s at least an hour, hopefully more. I haven’t tested any specifically intense applications, or tried it with grids etc attached.
  • You can charge from the Fates USB-C port, and use Fates while it charges, but it seems to crash when you pull out the power supply, so power down before doing that. On the upside, it seems to charge and run happily from my Macbook Pro charger.
  • The battery level isn’t visible anywhere, so it will just die without warning.

Goals:

  • I wanted an internal battery without modifying the case
  • I realised I also needed a power switch, so removed the 4th encoder and put a toggle in it’s place
  • I wanted to be able to charge through the existing USB-C plug

1: Prepare the Fates board

  • To make space for the battery, I removed a couple of 10uf electrolytic caps, replacing them with 1206 22uf caps (I didn’t have any 10u), which fit nicely across the pads
  • I removed the 4th encoder, and drilled out enough of the PCB to make space for the switch
  • I found the thinnest wire I have in my workshop and threaded it through the via on the ‘O’ of POWER. This is the +5v inlet from the USB C socket.
  • I cut the trace that runs from the ‘W’ in POWER down to the capacitor. This separates the USB C socket from the rest of the board.
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2. Prepare the battery

  • I used this 3000mAh pack from Pimoroni
  • It’s slightly too long, so I VERY CAREFULLY sliced through the Kapton tape to free the little control PCB and fold it back on itself. If you nick the battery it WILL CATCH FIRE so don’t do that.

3. Prepare the charger board

  • I used this MP2636 charge and boost board from Pimoroni
  • Higher up this thread I learned that the board doesn’t work unmodified. I made these changes - read the MP2636 datasheet to make sense of these and find the resistors. I made the changes with a soldering iron, not hot air:
  • rOLIM limits the output power - by default it’s 42.4k = 2.61 amp limit. I changed it to 36K which is 3amps
  • ISET limits the charge power - by default it’s 47.5k = up to 2.5 amps charging. I changed it to 300k, so the battery can only receive 400ma when plugged into power - otherwise the Fates is starved of power while charging.
  • I didn’t add an extra capacitor
  • I removed the larger USB port to make the whole package thinner and easier to connect. This was a faff because it seemed to be attached with super high temperature solder.

4: Assembly and connections

  • Reinstalled the front paneI, put the switch in place - a subminature toggle, with a few washers to make it fit in the bigger hole.
  • Taped the battery into place with Kapton tape - and with a few strips beneath it to make sure nothing pokes into it.
  • Taped the control board on top of the battery
  • Connections - I used wire wrap:
  • The skinny wire you put in the via --> The +5 connection on the smaller USB socket. I actually connected it to the ceramic capacitors.
  • A ground pin on the USB C socket --> The GND connection on the smaller USB socket (the other side of those capacitors!)
  • GND on the larger USB connector --> The spare GND pin on Fates board
  • +5v on the larger USB connector --> One end of the switch
  • The other side of the switch --> The Spare +5v pin on the Fates board

5. What keyboard is that?

  • A Tada68 from KBDfans

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45 Likes
#1689

Sorry to be all over the place in this thread. I was wondering if anyone knew of a simple solution for WiFi connectivity issues. I re-flashed my sd card recently and this has happened before, where my network shows up and says attempting to connect but never does connect, but it seems as though maybe if that happens on the first attempt, you will be unable to connect via WiFi from that point on, even after reboot. I tried doing it via nmtui “Activate a Connection” as well but get the same issue.

Currently, I have a cat5 cable connected but I would like to use WiFi if at all possible. It would be nice to not have to flash the card again

#1691

Looks great! Have you heard of the Pijuice? It is an affordable UPS for RPI devices. It is open sourced and maybe we could get a board made up for fates/norns.

#1692

pijuice won’t work:

PiJuice will use up to just five of your GPIO pins (just power and I2C),

Not enough available GPIOS and there’s likely be conflicts with how things are currently assigned.

1 Like
#1693

Hi, hope you are doing well and safe.

Sometime ago i build a 64 fates and @okyeron and me could never figure out what the deal was. Frustrating since there are some great 64 scripts out there.

So after a few months i have tried, and no deal.

The only scripts that works its @okyeron “Grid Test” script.

Any one can think of what might be going on? Someone how can figure this out?

Here is a video showing the process…

Hoping some one can think of something :frowning:

#1694

This may be better suited to the neotrellis grid thread?

What other scripts have you tested with? What happens when you do? Keeping things simple should be best: Awake? Loom?