Need help for broken Transporter

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  • lukejackson
    Junior Member
    • Oct 2009
    • 6

    Need help for broken Transporter

    Hi all

    I am a long standing Transporter owner, but unfortunately my unit is no longer functional.

    What happened:

    First the screen stopped working, however I was still able to control the player through the web interface / iPeng and sound was fine. I tried restarting the unit by holding the power button - the unit clicked and restarted but the screen was still not working.

    I then unplugged the unit, opened it and checked for a loose connection to the screen. I plugged it back in and it no longer started at all. No click sound when starting up, no sign of ethernet connection on my router, although a red LED was flashing on the board (see picture below showing the light above the WLAN card).

    Click image for larger version

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    What I have tried:

    1. I removed the WLAN card as suggested in previous posts but still no start up and still the flashing red light
    2. It seemed to me the secondary beige board between the main board and the display was related to turning the unit on/off. I unplugged the cable between this board and the main board, turned the unit on and the red light did not flash. As such, I believe the secondary board is allowing power to pass to the main board.

    Any suggestions? Are Logitech still supporting these units? Even if they do, I'm based in Hong Kong which complicates things somewhat.

    Thanks

    Luke
  • Peiter
    Senior Member
    • Jun 2013
    • 121

    #2
    Did you check the fuse?

    Comment

    • lukejackson
      Junior Member
      • Oct 2009
      • 6

      #3
      Thanks Peiter

      I checked the fuse visually and it looks OK. The red light when plugging into the power seems to indicate there is some current passing through it.

      I can try removing it and seeing if the red light still comes on or not. On the board it says 250V 500mA slow, which I assume is sufficient specs to replace it if needed.

      Luke

      Comment

      • Gandhi
        Senior Member
        • Jan 2013
        • 224

        #4
        The red LED is situated next to the IC that looks like it might be connected to the IR Output. Have you had anything connected to the IR In or Out jacks (recently)?
        Best Regards,
        Gandhi

        Not often enough well recorded and mastered CDs | dBPowerAMP with AccurateRip | FLAC | fanless ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel i5-3570T | Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS 32-bit | LMS 7.8.0 | BruteFirDRC 3.0 (REWv5) | Transporter (balanced out) | Thule IA252B | Audio Physic Scorpio | no fancy cables. + Also some Booms. + Harmony 525s for them all, including waking the server from S3.

        Comment

        • lukejackson
          Junior Member
          • Oct 2009
          • 6

          #5
          Hi Gandhi

          No, I don't think I've ever used the IR port...

          Luke

          Comment

          • Gandhi
            Senior Member
            • Jan 2013
            • 224

            #6
            Originally posted by lukejackson
            2. It seemed to me the secondary beige board between the main board and the display was related to turning the unit on/off. I unplugged the cable between this board and the main board, turned the unit on and the red light did not flash. As such, I believe the secondary board is allowing power to pass to the main board.
            I seem to recall that the beige board creates the high voltage for the display and that it is situated far away from the DAC circuitry to minimize interference. The internal PSU must then be powering the beige board, which also is how I interpret the cabling in the picture.

            The blinking LED might be indicating that the PSU senses that it is shorted, turns itself off (LED off) and then tries again (LED on). If the blinking stops when you remove the beige board, it might indicate that the short circuit is somewhere in the beige board.

            Is your Transporter capable of playing audio without the beige board (but with no display)?

            Oh, and did I say "might"? ;-)
            Last edited by Gandhi; 2013-12-12, 09:21. Reason: Clarifications.
            Best Regards,
            Gandhi

            Not often enough well recorded and mastered CDs | dBPowerAMP with AccurateRip | FLAC | fanless ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel i5-3570T | Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS 32-bit | LMS 7.8.0 | BruteFirDRC 3.0 (REWv5) | Transporter (balanced out) | Thule IA252B | Audio Physic Scorpio | no fancy cables. + Also some Booms. + Harmony 525s for them all, including waking the server from S3.

            Comment

            • Pascal Hibon
              Senior Member
              • Oct 2006
              • 1599

              #7
              Originally posted by lukejackson
              2. It seemed to me the secondary beige board between the main board and the display was related to turning the unit on/off.
              I think that beige board is a power supply for the VFD display (but I could be wrong).

              It is a bit hard to give advice on such issues especially since there is no technical documentation available. But a good start is to measure the different power rails.
              For sure there is 5 volts and two rails for the analog (+ and - something like 12 or 15 volts).
              Yamaha A-S3000 (sliver) -> Focal Electra 1028 Be
              1 x SB Boom, 1 x SB Radio, 1 x SB Touch and 2 x RPI 2B
              1 x SB3 and 1 x SB Touch in storage
              ReadyNAS NVX for storage
              piCorePlayer on RPI 4B as LMS server
              iPeng on iPhone, SqueezePad & iPeng on iPad, Material Skin
              http://www.last.fm/user/phibon

              Comment

              • _NK_
                Member
                • Dec 2005
                • 59

                #8
                *Exactly* the same for me

                Hi,

                Exactly the same issue here!

                On Dec 31 my Transporter was playing happily all night through new year and on the wee hours I hit stop and switched my amp off. The next afternoon on 1st Jan I tried switching it on but nothing happened. No clicking noise no display not reachable over the network.

                I tried all known resets/xilinx etc..also with the wi/fi card ejected...let it off the power grid overnight nothing seems to work since it does not power up.

                The fuse is OK.

                Everything points to hardware failure in some very early link of the chain (although I'm not an engineer)

                I visually inspected the pcbs but all "seems" ok...apart from that *$#^@! diode led that keeps binking red. Anyone knows what this is? An error code?


                Does any fellow squeezebox owner with a technical background have a suggestion?


                I will give another more thorough visual inspection on the parts with a magnifying glass and take pics during the weekend.


                I wish to all a happy 2014! (although it started on the wrong foot over here)


                Nikos

                Comment

                • Celeritas
                  Member
                  • Jul 2008
                  • 31

                  #9
                  I just had the same issue start with my Transporter. Were there any solutions?
                  Transporter -> Classe' CP-47.5 -> Classe' CA-201 -> Martin Logan SL3

                  Comment

                  • _NK_
                    Member
                    • Dec 2005
                    • 59

                    #10
                    Hello there.

                    It's been a year since mine died like I described above but life got in the way and I never found time to deal with it. (have put a spare SB3 as a "temporary" replacement)

                    What I can suggest though is to visually inspect the small pcb feeding the display since upon **closer** inspection I remember I saw what appeared to me as burning discolourisation..it was a resistor or a capacitor if memory serves..but the burning was more evident on the pcb beneath the component. I always "planned" to look deeper into this but never got around to I admit.

                    If your TP shows similar findings then I would feel pretty confident that we have isolated the guilty party.

                    My second guess would be one of the power supply relays on the upper left being stuck or fried.

                    If you can report back I would appreciate it and I'm sure other TP owners in the future as well, since there seems to be a pattern here that maybe is affecting TPs as they age.

                    Good Luck

                    Comment

                    • fcm4711
                      Slim Devices Developer
                      • Apr 2005
                      • 886

                      #11
                      Hi guys

                      Under normal circumstances the flashing LED mentioned on the main board indicates received IR signals. Any compatible remote would make it light up as the raw IR signals are all sent to LMS. Only LMS then decides whether the command is for Transporter or not. So I am not sure why without any IR signals present the LED would light up or flash at all.

                      The little beige board between main board and display board is a power supply (input 110V - 240V, output 5V) which does supply power to the display and via flat cable also supplies power to the microcontroller and WiFi board.

                      In my experience only one thing died in my Transporter which is the beige board (5V supply). Once Transporter would not start at all anymore and a second time the first indicator was that the right display would stay dark (and first I thought the display was broken) but in the end it was that 5V power supply again.

                      I cannot comment on the WiFi card as I run my Transporter without it.

                      I would suggest you'll check out that 5V power supply and whether it still generates 5V at all.

                      Be careful though as you are dealing with 110V or 220V on some parts inside Transporter.

                      Felix

                      P.S. The high voltage needed for the displays is generated on the display board itself.
                      Programming is the art of cleverly arranging bits and bytes. - (c) Felix Mueller

                      Comment

                      • _NK_
                        Member
                        • Dec 2005
                        • 59

                        #12
                        Hi Felix it's good to see you're still here!

                        I thank you for your response on this - indeed your past experience (2 times a hardware failure on the beige PCB) points towards what the rest of us are experiencing being a failure on this pcb as well.

                        Do you happen to recall which specific component was the weak link, or did you simply swap the whole PCB?

                        Any feedback will be *much* appreciated.

                        Thanks

                        Nikos

                        Comment

                        • fcm4711
                          Slim Devices Developer
                          • Apr 2005
                          • 886

                          #13
                          Hello Nikos

                          Thank you for the kind words. And yes, occasionally I still browse the forums. ;-)

                          I am no expert in switching power supplies, so no, I did not try to figure out what component broke but replaced the whole thing. As I knew the specs (5V/2A) I simply replaced it with a switching power supply I still had from an old obsolete router.

                          Again, be aware of the high voltage inside Transporter.

                          Felix

                          P.S. This seems to be the model (although the board length doesn't match exactly): http://www.unifive-us.com/products/12w-series-1
                          Programming is the art of cleverly arranging bits and bytes. - (c) Felix Mueller

                          Comment

                          • _NK_
                            Member
                            • Dec 2005
                            • 59

                            #14
                            Hi Felix and thank you for your feedback on this I appreciate it.

                            Yes the unifive model does indeed look like a promising replacement although by looking at the specs-pdf I admit I have a hard time understanding how this power supply is able to provide all output options 3V/2.0A 3.3V/2.0A 5V/2.0A 7.5V/1.3A 9V/1.1A 12V/1.0A 15V/0.7A 18V/0.6A 24V/0.5A at the same time?

                            My limited knowledge regarding psus tells me there should/would (?) be different versions for each output option but I fail to see on the site how one would order one specific version in our case the 5v/2a. Am I missing something here?

                            The pdf mentions that 5v/2a corresponds to "input condition #3" whatever that means.

                            Either way I can see light in the tunnel and I don't think it's the train

                            Nikos

                            Comment

                            • fcm4711
                              Slim Devices Developer
                              • Apr 2005
                              • 886

                              #15
                              Hi Nikos

                              The linked switched power supply is rated 12W. That would suggest it can only have one of the listed voltage/current option at the time. I don't think that can be chosen on the fly, but must be ordered with the desired specifications. However how that is done from their website I have no idea. Have you tried to contact them by email?

                              Cheers
                              Felix
                              Programming is the art of cleverly arranging bits and bytes. - (c) Felix Mueller

                              Comment

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