LCD Display issues and fan question


 

Whit McCormack

New member
I have been trolling this forum quite a bit over the last few weeks as I began to assemble my HM v.4.3. I am a novice at soldering at best, but voltage checks and continuity checks indicate all is well. I have tried flashing the ATMega controller a couple times tonight. I flashed it last night and got the No Probe message and thought all was well.

Tonight I was working to get connected to my WiFi and noticed to gibberish on the display. I had also jacked some things up enough that I decided to re-flash and add my wireless network info in the config file. Now, I still get the gibberish on the display. Is this going to require re-flashing the micro controller?

My other question is about fans. My smoker is a HBT Gameday (www.hbtsmokers.com). The cooking chamber is approximately 60" in length. The fire box is insulated and measures 30"x20"x20". It has two pinwheel dampers on the door. Will the fon that I purchased with my kit be enough to work on that size fire box or should I consider a fan for each damper?

Thanks in advance for ant assistance! Smoke on!
 
Sounds like you have solder issues either on the LCD or the shift register IC. I guess with the HMv4.3 you could have solder issues with the daughter board headers too. Could be excess flux on the board in those areas as well, if there is a lot of flux left from soldering I would clean the board with alcohol first and see if that helps out. I am guessing that it has nothing to do with the flashing of the ATMega, cause they generally don't flake out after flashing and working.
That's a pretty huge smoker, the stock HM blower isnt going to get it, perhaps even two will fall short. They are rated at 6.7CFM, 14CFM MAY be enough, hard to tell. If there is any info from the manufacturer or fellow owners about air flow requirements that would be helpful.
 
Thanks for the advice Ralph. I have already scrubbed the boards to remove any excess flux that I can see. I will try that again this evening to see if it clears up. I was thinking it may be in the shift register. As I mentioned, I am a novice at best with a soldering iron. I think I will try to reflow the connections again before scrubbing.

As for the fans, there is not a lot of information out there. I will see what I can find out from others and report back. Thanks again!
 
I just finished reflowing everything that was mentioned above. I plugged it all back together and still get the gibberish on the LCD display. I nosed around in the System Log and the Kernel Log. At the bottom of the System log I have 2 daemon errors:

daemon.err uhttpd [371]: wc: /proc/net/nf_conntrack: No Such File or Directory
daemon.err uhttpd [371]: sysctl: error: 'net.nf_conntrack_max' is an unknown key

I am not sure what these mean, but a system control error doesn't sound good. I am at a loss for what to do next. I guess I could always order replacement boards and components and try again. The engineer in me won't let it rest....unfortunately, my background is in civil engineering and not electrical/electronics......
 

 

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