K8045 Messageboard Display

I have successfully used the K8045 8 Input programmable Messageboard with LCD & serial interface device in our products for a few years without problems but recently have seen instances where the message is either square blocks or garbled at start up. Powering OFF and back ON again restores normal operation. Can you offer any advice regarding what might cause this effect? Could it be caused by electrical noise on the power supply line to the device? Thank you.

Could you post some pictures of the front and back of the board?
Maybe someone will see something you have missed.
Happens to me all of the time.

Thank you for your suggestion. I will get the pictures taken and post them tomorrow. Meantime, my gut feeling is that it is an electrical noise spike getting into the circuit through the dc power line so I have ordered some clip on ferrite suppressors which will come tomorrow and see if one of those makes a difference.

I took the photos to send but I find myself unable to send them. I had assumed that if I clicked on the “Img” button I would get an option to upload them into this message from my desktop but as you can see, all that happens is “” is inserted into my message.

Hopefully you will be able to instruct me on how to send the photos.

you’ll have to upload your photos to an image hosting website and copy the link to the photo here as a comment

goo.gl/photos/HGrJv2TcvEm6DTWPA

I have never done anything like that before but hopefully the above will enable you to see the photos of the top, bottom, and the sort of faulty message that come up sometimes for reasons unknown.

Cheers

I have not heard from you since my last post in which I provided a link to the photos that I had uploaded to Google Photos.

Unfortunately, I observe that fitting the ferrite suppressor around the power lead did not resolve the issue that occasionally the device displays characters that are unrelated to what I have programmed and I have to power it off and then on again to restore normal function.

As I said in my original post on the subject, I have used the K8045 on our products for a few years now but only recently encountered this problem. Also, I can report that the problem is not confined to a single K8045.

I hope to hear from you again with your suggestions of what else I might try to overcome this problem. Thank you.

I had another engineer looking at your photos and together with your description we concluded that indeed electrical noise is the problem.

Try encapsulating the K8045 in a metal case.

Best Regards,
VEL337

Thank you for your advice.

Best wishes

Gerry Burne