Hello,
I am in the process of building a new printer. I already have an existing RepRap Prusa i2. On my new printer, I am adding an LCD smart controller like this. These are my own pictures, and you can see it was working fine. The only issue was that if I tried to run it untethered from USB, it would not stay on. A few nights ago I had an issue where my board suddenly wouldn't connect to pronterface or to Arduino IDE. I did some trouble shooting (cleaned some flux off the pins, re flashed marlin) and got it connecting again. Now here is my issue and the trouble shooting steps I've taken so far.
When I plug in my arduino with RAMPS and the LCD to my computer, the LCD works great. Nothing else plugged into RAMPS.
As I add stepper drivers to the board, the contrast of the LCD dips a bit, still tolerable after all 5 drivers installed though.
When I plug in my power supply to RAMPS attached to arduino and plugged into my computer over USB (with nothing plugged into ramps), the contrast dips but again is still tolerable.
As I add stepper drivers, the contrast becomes so faint it is barely visible after all 5 are installed.
For any of these situations, if I unplug from my computer and run just off my power supply, the LCD turns off completely.
Now, I have another printer so I tried trouble shooting with those electronics. Everything works great (with all electronics plugged into ramps). Contrast is amazing. This is the case with either power supply (the one from my new printer or from the existing one that I'm now testing with). In addition, using these electronics, I can unplug my computer USB and the LCD still looks great running off of the power supply alone.
Any idea what is going on here and how I can fix it? Thanks for any help.
I am in the process of building a new printer. I already have an existing RepRap Prusa i2. On my new printer, I am adding an LCD smart controller like this. These are my own pictures, and you can see it was working fine. The only issue was that if I tried to run it untethered from USB, it would not stay on. A few nights ago I had an issue where my board suddenly wouldn't connect to pronterface or to Arduino IDE. I did some trouble shooting (cleaned some flux off the pins, re flashed marlin) and got it connecting again. Now here is my issue and the trouble shooting steps I've taken so far.
When I plug in my arduino with RAMPS and the LCD to my computer, the LCD works great. Nothing else plugged into RAMPS.
As I add stepper drivers to the board, the contrast of the LCD dips a bit, still tolerable after all 5 drivers installed though.
When I plug in my power supply to RAMPS attached to arduino and plugged into my computer over USB (with nothing plugged into ramps), the contrast dips but again is still tolerable.
As I add stepper drivers, the contrast becomes so faint it is barely visible after all 5 are installed.
For any of these situations, if I unplug from my computer and run just off my power supply, the LCD turns off completely.
Now, I have another printer so I tried trouble shooting with those electronics. Everything works great (with all electronics plugged into ramps). Contrast is amazing. This is the case with either power supply (the one from my new printer or from the existing one that I'm now testing with). In addition, using these electronics, I can unplug my computer USB and the LCD still looks great running off of the power supply alone.
Any idea what is going on here and how I can fix it? Thanks for any help.