American DJ Pocket Scan

[Gnarles]

Hi all,
 Usually, I lurk for a while before making requests on boards but I'm forced to bypass that habit here today.
I have a couple American DJ brand "Pocket Scan" DMX lights that are misbehaving. These are small moving head (stepper motor) lights with a couple gobos for shape & color plus a small laser in them in addition to the standard color/gobo lamp. I contacted ADJ, but they refuse to give out anything but a schematic for the units - no service manuals of any kind. They just say none are available. I'm sure when these were the "Next big thing" and new they were available, but not now I guess.

 Anyone have anything for these things? I'd love to at least troubleshoot the units before I just start throwing money at parts. Logic board assys run over $100 each for these things and they have maybe $5 worth of parts on them.

Cheers,
 - Gnarles

[Ante]

Hi Gnarles,

Welcome to our forum,

You say anything “but” a schematic; does this mean you got a schematic? If you got it, post it and tell us what’s wrong. Someone here might help you figure out what to do.

[Gnarles]

I think I can get a schematic from them, I guess that's the next step huh?

The main problem with one of them is that it'll just keep resetting itself over & over again. Sometimes it goes through it's initializing sequence (self test) and reset. Other times, it'll work for a while (less than 5 minutes) then start resetting itself. It powers itself down & restarts at reset. Maybe that might be telling where in the circuit to start looking for problems?

Thanks,
 - Gnarles

[Ante]

Hi Gnarles,

I have to tell you; I don’t know anything about these gizmos! However a schematic could shed some light over it and attract more members to try to help you. The first thing I would check is the power supply and its connections for glitches since you have sudden “restarts” and resets!

[audioguru]

I've repaired many intermittent problems just by unplugging circuit boards, connectors and ICs if they have sockets then re-seating them a few times.