Trouble Shooting
Well, you take yer six-shooter, line up the troublesome BEAM critter on a wooden fencepost and... aw, it’s
really not that hard to fix this circuit. There isn’t much that can go wrong with this particular layout. Run
through this checklist and see if you can isolate your problem. If you’re still stumped after this, leave it for a
day and come back when your sanity returns.
Problem:
1381/transistor/diode installed the wrong
way around
Backwards polarity on the capacitor
Solder Bridge (solder crosses copper
pads on PCB)
Remedy:
Make sure the part is installed in the
spaced marked for it - there’s not that
many parts to get mixed up!
BOTH
capacitors are polarity sensitive,
meaning they have to be installed the
right-way around. Striped side
always
is
the ‘-’ side.
Carefully examine the PCB to see if any
solder hasn’t accidently "bridged" from
one pad to another. Remove any
bridges by melting it with the soldering
iron and then sharply tapping the PCB
against a hard surface.
Another valuable diagnostic tool is a voltmeter. If you have one available, connect it to the
capacitor leads. Voltage in the capacitor should climb to about 2.6 before it dumps the power to
the motor.
Be sure that none of the existing component leads are accidently pressing against any other
leads or PCB traces. The traces that make the electrical connections are usually protected by the
green or black plastic covering on the back of the solar cell, but it
can
be scraped off (making a
short circuit, which is bad!).
Push come to shove, call us - but
NOT
in the middle of the night. The circuit’s not designed to
operate at night anyway (yeah, yeah -
that’s
the reason...). Or use your digital camera on “Macro”
mode (usually a setting with a flower symbol) to take a clear picture, and email it to us.
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