Best way to salvage LOTS of SSRs?

A

andyhough

New member
What is the quickest, least expensive way to salvage about 48 SSRs?

I am on a budget, have two dead Renard SS24 boards, and a burnt Grinch, but am hoping I could at least turn them on manually.

So, I read Marie Condo's book and clearing LOTS of stuff out of my house. So, I get to the attic and have literally hundreds of unopened incandescent minis lights, and other cool stuff I abandoned in 2015 when my Grinch board crashed, and I bought two built Renard SS24s that I never go a peep out of. So I went to sleep. Now I have a very nice display that is almost exactly like it was 4 years ago, with no blinkie flashy.

I have glanced through the Wiki and see options like 12 channels directly on a parallel port Are there other ways I can use these without spending a bundle sort of quickly.

Thanks in advance!
 
Pyroandy said:
Why don't you just fix your SS24 Boards?
Click to expand...

Unabashed and shameless lack of skill. I bought them pre built from a guy here, and spent hours trying to get them working, then showed them to 2 Electrical engineer friends who work on the radar systems at Lockheed. Both of them said, your Grinch soldering job looks much better than this. I bought a programmer to reprogram the chips, never got anywhere with that, then the 16 season was approaching ( A year had passed, I estimate 40 hours of effort trying to get those boards working. So, though I believe I deserve extra credit for persistence, I still failed the "get the SS24's working skills test.

Wayne J graciously invited me to send them to him to see what he could do, but Alas, I chose to bury myself in a deep dark no light show depression until I decided this year that I will give away everything I do not put up. Now I am trying to keep my promise to myself and use everything I can as an homage to Marie Kondo's impact on my wordrobe, my books, and most of the other clutter that has been exercised from our life. But alas, I am craving a way to use SSRs as power strips this year, in hopes to make a go at building controllers and adding pixles to my display next year. This year I just want to avoid tossing out a bunch of lights I can not use because I don't have any splitters.

Thanks for the suggestion thought, maybe It is worth a few minutes more.
 
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Sending them to Wayne to repair might be the easiest and cheapest way to get a show going , but just not this year. I know he is deep in getting his show running so maybe some time after the 1st of the year. Reach out to him.
 
You need to do some basic troubleshooting to determine if the SS24 is bad or your interface to it is bad.

First you can do a quick touch up soldering on that board in about 30 minutes. Next check that all socked IC’s are in correctly (right orientation). Inspect other parts as well.

If everything looks good take out the PIC U6, wire AC cord to the left side AC black jack (use caution on AC please). Wire a string of lights to CH1. Then take a wire and temporarily connect PIC Socket U6 pin-3 to U6 pin-14 (GND). If the channel is good the lights will turn on.

You can repeat this for all channels if needed, look at schematic to see what PIC pins go to what channel. This is static checking of the board. It doesn’t test everything but a quick way to see if the power control part is ok.

After that put in PICs (recommend Renard standard FW running at 57600 baud). From there it depends mostly on the PC setup and USB to serial dongle you are using. Jumper JP1 is usually installed on the Renard going to the PC.

If your not comfortable doing these things you should probably wait for someone to help but it should not be that hard to get your SS24’s running. Good luck!
 
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