Oiy, on day two of trying to get stuff to work and not doing well…
Finished assembly yesterday. Tried to get spindle working (from my previous machine) GS20 drive. Hooked up via RS485 as GS20 only accepts 0-10v analog. VFD shows FWD RUN when called, fan comes on but spindle doesn’t start. Then Alarm 14 comes up. Occasionally spindle will come on after a power cycle but not at correct speed.
Decided to take a step back and wire LED strips, thinking this should be a no problem easy project. Again a fail, have had 1 light come on sporadically, but not all the time. Changed the strip light setting to 60 in the firmware. Have 5.12 volts at the end of the string but no lights. Continuity is fine on wire I made up on all three terminals. Using the BTF WS2812B 1m 60 LED strip as the link from technical handbook is dead, assume this is the updated version?
It would seem my biggest fears with this controller are somewhat a reality right now. I switched from a Masso machine that I was quite comfortable with and so far can’t get anything beyond basic movement to work right with this thing.
Ok so through some type of black magic the spindle is now working as desired.
The LED lights on the other hand are still a no go. Anyone had this issue with the updated BTF lights? Link for something that does work in 1m 60 led strip?
You’re not the first noticing that the slb is somehow involved in casting (black) magical spells. Whilest I don’t own an SLB, I cannot speak out of experiance, but I’ve seen enough frustrated posts resolving into stumped posters having to report that things worked out -somehow- after a good night sleep. Have a look at lens story here.
That is not how we like things to resolve. We want repeatable results with known solutions. Leaving frustrated and returning to find a working machine after a while is nice, but does not remove all the previous frustration. We are left with a nagging itch in the back of our head.
The led strip is something I cannot help much with either. I could go down the usual suspects like telling the strip is directional, look at the arrows on the strip; the power supply needs to be connected to the slb, not at the extra wires on the led strip and maybe some more captain obvious remarks. I however read between the lines you are more than capable to avoid andor correct the usual mistakes.
Maybe you are in a position to cut the strip down to a single led to see if you are able to drive these ledstrips at all?
@Bnb187 I have had my leds working for quite a while now. I am not at home so I cannot send you my settings. However, since you asked about leds that worked, I went to the link that Sienci provides. I don’t know what “updated BTF lights” are, so I can’t comment on using them.
Sure thing.. away for a couple days but will report back.
On the bright side hooking up my jtech laser from previous machine went quite smoothly.
TLS and probe seem to be ready, assuming the TLS light on SLB is supposed to be on when not activated with NC TLS.
Off to get a couple sheets of ridiculously heavy and expensive MDF Monday for table top and bottom shelf. Need 1” for my dogs to work and want to go all the way to the back on the first layer so at least one 5x10 of 1”, maybe just 3/4” for the bottom shelf. But still a couple hundred pounds a sheet.
The WS2812 family of “pixels” are a combination of RGB LED and shift register-like IC chip; they require a specific digital “protocol” on the input pin to do anything. (The alternative are LED strips that only have RGB LEDs on them, without the special IC chip) The LEDs on a strip/string are individually controllable, so the entire string does not have to be showing a single color.
Some debugging ideas:
is the polarity correct? Reversing + and - is usually a bad or very bad thing to do, even though the WS2812B includes a reverse polarity protection circuit.
are you connecting the correct end of the strip to the controller? On the correct end, the 3-wire connection is power (5v and gnd) and Digital_IN, while at the other end it is power and Digital_OUT.
The protocol for turning these LEDs on involves sending a color value to each individual LED on the strip. If you have 20 LEDS, you should send 20 color values. If you only send 3, only the first 3 LEDS will light up. The SLB-EXT has a setting for how many LEDS are in the strip. While it is unlikely, a bad value there (like 0) could possibly result in this type of problem.
You might have a 12v RGB strip. See the Sienci docs page if you have this type, as the instructions are different.
as with many cheap imports, the strip might be bad. You could try hooking it up to a cheap arduino to check. For some simple Arduino code to use, tell the Google to “provide arduino code for simple WS2812B led strip test”
More than one working but definitely not as it should be.. I’ll try a different PSU but have seen others hinting at issues on the FB group as well.. makes me wonder if there’s a bug with new gsender possibly?
@Bnb187 I know that I have asked this before, but at the risk of being a pain, I’ll ask again. When you connect the power supply directly to the led strip - no connection to the SLB - do they all light up?
@Bnb187 I’m not at home so I can’t look at the ones that I have. I do know that the plug that came with them would not work and I had to change it out.
You may want to open a support ticket with Sienci. They have likely come across this before. I seem to recall that mine would light with just the power to them, but it’s been a while so I could be mistaken.
My OCD has engaged on this now.. have tried 2 different power supplies, 2 different LED strips. Have now ordered a basic Arduino starter kit to test everything exclusive of the SLB.
