Matrix Orbital Corp

Well, I just thought id share with you an experience i just had with my mx 212. ..

Ive had my unit running sucessfully of the internal USB cable for some time, and finally got around to adding some LED's to the GPOs. I wired everything up, tested them, and they worked fine. So i mounted everything in my case, and began screwing it all together. At this point, my orbital went dead, anda small amount of grey smoke rose from the unit. Fearing the worst, i removed the unit from power, briefly examined it, and tried to turn it on again.....no luck....it was dead.

After checking my wiring, i noticed tiny stirip on one LED lead was exposed, my heatshrink missed it....i think that it shorted with the case., thus pulling too much current thru the orbital. Realizing that i had essentially destroyed my unit, and that a replacement was unlikely, i attempted to repair it. I noticed one of the tracks on the PCB had melted away slightly...essentially acting as a fuse. After wiring a bridge across this gap, i was able to repower my unit, and it is working as i type.

However, it seems some damage was still done to the unit, two of my keys are unresponsive. Perhaps the key mapping has gone haywire, and instead of J and P, they are mapped to '7 and ?'....i dont know....ill get back to you on my success with that.

Is there a way of reading the key trigger sent by the unit so i can set it in LCDC ?

Using LCDC you have 2 ways to do It:

1.- Under Configure/Test click on 'Test Display' then press any Keypad key and you'll see character sended from display.

2.- In Events configuration, choose 'On Keypad press' event then click in Keypad editbox, press a keypad key and you'll see Character, this only works if you have Live Preview active.

cheers for that dtorner

well, i tested they keys, and all but 2 are sending valid signals. Turns out that the keypad connector is also damaged...one of the strips is broken. However i was unable to solder a link across the gap, the stuff just melts away before the solder can stick. Any electronics guru's out there who know how to work with it?

Its a translucent plastic strip, with thin metal tracks going through it. The connector at one end is labeled crimpex. I could solder onto the connector pin off the PCB, however the other end of the plastic strip disapears into the unit without connecting to another solder point.

you may need to shave some of the coating off the plastic and do a goodol tapeing job to the un solderable side or get a very special silver solder that comes in a liquid form and canweld with jus a match stick or yuo might try some conductive type of thermal epoxy

Thanks for that thorilan, ill see if i can find some of that liquid solder you mentioned...