Lighting Kit Help

So the LED does actually work.  Instruction photos show it to be a green light, but this one lights up red.  But, I was able to get it to light with only one prong from the voltage meter touching it; it also worked with both prongs but given that people only come with a maximum of 2 hands, I couldn't hold both prongs and get the camera into position, let alone in focus.  Even with only one prong, I still had some difficulty with the focus, but you can see that the light is glowing.

On another note, the TenaControls owner has responded to me.  I will respond with an explanation of what I've done to get it to function to this point and see what he comes back with.

I also notice that when I touch the volt meter prongs to the prongs on the board where the LEDs are to be connected, the result is the needle moves off the scale to the left, as in a negative reading perhaps.  

It does not light an LED.  Red wire to the long prong, black to the short.

Hello!

So there's progress! Shitty one, but still progress. Do I understand it right that the LED lights up when you touch it? If so, then you have a bad soldering on it, exactly like Eaglecash867 explained it. That's bad, because now you can't be sure of the other soldering joints on the board - what if something else doesn't work, too - then you would have to check and maybe resolder every component of that feature... Lots of unnecessary work.

Not sure about that LED you hooked up, but did you notice the instructions say that on the power connector the red wire goes to the front pin, but for the LEDs the red wire goes to the back pin?

I sure do wonder what the company is going to tell you. Here in Poland we have a joke which I'm going to make family-friedly: For 70$ that board should bring you breakfast every morning!

As usual, good luck and have a nice day

Paweł

Aggieman

So the LED does actually work.  Instruction photos show it to be a green light, but this one lights up red.  But, I was able to get it to light with only one prong from the voltage meter touching it; it also worked with both prongs but given that people only come with a maximum of 2 hands, I couldn't hold both prongs and get the camera into position, let alone in focus.  Even with only one prong, I still had some difficulty with the focus, but you can see that the light is glowing. 

Depending on how you have your meter set up, the LED coming on when touched with a meter lead isn't necessarily an indication of a bad solder joint in that area.  Meters produce a small amount of voltage to conduct resistance measurements, so it could just be that causing it to light up.  I was using my meter at work just yesterday to move a 1:1 aircraft's glideslope needle up and down to check it for high electrical or mechanical resistance.  When set up to be an ohmmeter, I could actually get half-scale deflection, which takes about 1.5 volts to accomplish.

Hopefully the Tenacontrols owner will be more responsive now and get you fixed up. 

Pawel, there's nothing wrong with a $70.00 price tag on something like this if it does what its supposed to do and its made of high quality components.  Things like this take a lot of time to develop for a given application, and people can't run a business by donating their time.  We can voluntarily donate our time here to help fellow modellers, but businesses can't do that for us and still be around when we need them later.  The guy over at Falcon 3D Parts charges a lot more than 70 bucks for his lighting kits, but I don't have a problem paying it because his work is absolutely superb.  Sorry for the OT, this is just kind of a sensitive subject for me.  I've seen a lot of good people in my industry lose their life's work because of all of the people in the world that don't think that someone should be allowed to make money. 

Well, some good news!

The owner did reach out to me.  He suggested to me exactly what Pawel points out - the LED's longer post should connect to the back side of the board.  So I did that with that one bulb I had been using, and nothing.  I attached a different bulb and got glorious blue light!

So it would appear I have one bad bulb.

I remain a bit concerned over what y'all are seeing with regard to potentially bad soldering, though.

I figure I'll hook everything up, including running all the fiber optics, and not mount anything in a permanent fashion, and see how it all works.  Testing along the way.  Something I have noticed is that even when these leads are attached via this wire wrap tool, they still can come loose.  Should I go ahead and solder those?  Soldering is not something I've done a lot of in recent years, but I figure I can at least get the wires to remain where they need to be; might not be pretty, though.  I'll need to do a good bit of practicing on non-working components before working with the live ones.

And to echo Eaglecash, I really did not want to bomb this guy with negative reviews and demands for a refund.  For the very reasons that he cites.  I would have had he not responded, but it wasn't going to make me happy.  Scale modeling is a tough enough business to stay in, as I imagine it is for this type of electrical component products, so I'd rather not be one who would contribute to anyone's business failing (I recognize that my "responsibility" for that failure would be only a minimal part of it, with most of that falling on the owner/proprietor).

If y'all have any further suggestions, please let me know.  But a big heart-felt thank you from Texas!

GREAT NEWS AGGIEMAN!

As far as the wires and the leads go, what I would do if I was in this situation is to actually desolder and remove that header (the group of leads).  Headers really only serve a useful purpose when you have a mating connector that slides onto the header.  After the header was removed, I would then solder the wires directly to the solder pads that correspond to the header pin that you would have attached them to.  But, if you don't want to do that, then soldering the wires onto the header pins is a perfectly viable alternative...just not as tidy.  Another thing that I would be concerned about is the quality of the board.  Some are better than others, and there are some that, no matter how careful you are, you end up pulling up pads and tearing traces.  So, removing the header could easily end up destroying what you've already put so much effort into.

You could also look around at on-line electronics suppliers and find the mating connector for the header, but those tend to require special crimpers to get the contacts onto the wires

Edit:  One more thing on soldering the wires.  Just make sure to give those leads a good scrubbing with ScotchBrite or something similar to remove any oxidation/contamination on them.  That will make the solder flow better.  Its also helpful to brush a little flux on those leads to help with heat transfer.

Eaglecash867 - OK I understand everything needs time to develop and everybody needs to eat and somebody has to pay for it - that's all perfectly clear. I also have paid a lot of money for hobby items, sometimes the buyer jus says "it's worth it for me" - I'm perfectly OK with that.

It's just that when you compare a consumer market device you buy for 70$ - like for example a smart display with built in artificial intelligence personal assistant - with this PCB and a bag of parts we're talking about here... I start getting a feeling that something's not OK here.

It starts looking like you could achieve the same task using off the shelf components from a chinese supermarket for a fraction of the price and maybe get some nice features on the way like controlling the lighting of your model via Smartphone/Bluetooth or over network/WiFi/IP. Dang, some days ago I personally bought a development board that can drive over 10 LEDs and has WiFi connectivity for under 10$. And it worked and was properly soldered. If I connected this to an USB charger (and you know how expensive those are) I would need to add some fiber optics and LEDs and I would still have some money left for a nice lunch.

OK - somebody might say: I want to pay the money and not worry about looking for components, integrating everything and so on. Like shown in the posts above this kit doesn't really give you that neither.

All that ranting slowly makes me think maybe I should bring out my own lighting kits that would make this Madman kit like a museum item? Yeah, I know I'm just flapping my mouth right now, it's just that there's visible room for improvement here.

Two things that bother me the most about this PCB are shabby soldering, and irrational design with that unexplainable power supply... 12 - 18V??? Why? Is your other business an AA Cell factory?

Allright, rant off - thanks everybody for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Pawel, in this particular case, I agree with you.  The shoddy workmanship that we both noticed makes the lighting kit worth far less than what the guy is asking for them.  Its really strange that there is such a difference between the pictures in the instruction manual and the actual item itself.  It did seem that your criticism of the cost was more of a generalized statement and not just about this particular, low-quality product though.  If that wasn't the case, I apologize for the misundertanding.  My nerves were a little raw from an experience I had earlier this week with a customer who was very upset with me for not working more than 11 hours a day and diverting my attention from 2 big projects I'm running for the Colorado State Patrol just to give her a quote for installing a cheap EHSI and NAV/COM in her Piper in the amount of time she'd like one.  I'm having to work as much as I am because I'm pretty much all that's left in my area...everyone else went out of business bending to the demands of penny pinchers.  

I understand the quality thing though, so I'm right there with ya on that.  I would have been absolutely livid if I gladly paid 70 bucks, and that was what I got in the box.  I see the same kind of thing in the world of after-market resin kits.  Many of them are really amazing quality, and some are just plain garbage...yet the guys making the garbage want to charge you the same price (sometimes more) as the guys making the good stuff.  Sometimes, if you give an honest assessment of a garbage resin product, there do tend to be some modellers that want to run you out on a rail...so the garbage never improves.