Tuesday March 19, 2024

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Vizio VHT510 Subwoofer and Sound Bar Not Pairing

This is going to be a long shot. The year is 2015 and I'm having issues with a Vizio VHT-510 (VHT510) wireless sound bar / subwoofer. The subwoofer isn't connecting with the sound bar.. so no audio out of the rear speakers or the sub. LED blink code on the subwoofer indicates a wireless link is established, but audio is not detected. I opened up the subwoofer & it has a power supply and another board that's essentially the MCU / sound board / amp. Don't see anything visibly wrong -- most of the audio board is surface mount. Don't see any electrolytic caps that are bad. If anyone out there has a VHT-510 where the subwoofer and soundbar stopped pairing and was able to fix it, I'd like to hear it. I have 25v going into the audio board from the power supply. There's an led (D5 I think) that blinks rapidly on the audio board that I'd assume indicates the Atmel chip is running. There's another led that blinks when the subwoofer is powered up next to IC20. No schematics. Only used this system a handful of times, but left the subwoofer powered on.. probably killed it quicker that way. I know other people have had the same issue, hoping someone has a fix. If I figure out anything I'll post it myself.

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It's Been A While..

It's been a while since my last post on Techdose. That seems to happen pretty often. I've been pretty busy over the last 1.5yrs with various house projects and if I do get a chance to work on some technical / electronic projects it's normally been pinball related. Lots of machines to repair still and I've been working on various test equipment over at http://www.pinitech.com.

For right now this website has taken a bit of a back seat to the other projects I have going on and especially since any blog type of posts or projects directly related to pinball are now at the PINITECH website. In the future I may have some non-pinball projects I'm working on again and update here. I still get emails from people thanking me for various repair articles or tutorials every now & then. It's nice to know the information here is still helping some people!

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Gottlieb System 1 NVRAM Adapter (for 5101 RAM)

Here's one of the prototypes I had made up in January, a Gottlieb System 1 Pinball NVRAM Adapter. Still in the testing phase on this one, more info over at Pinitech. I don't expect it to be a huge seller but since there does not currently exist any NVRAM or 5101 adapters for the Gottlieb System 1 I figured why not throw it in with some other prototype designs I was having made.

As for how well this might sell -- I'm thinking it's going to be affected by a narrow market for this type of product. First, Gottlieb System 1 pinball machines just aren't as popular as some of the Bally/Williams machines from the same era. Second, if someone has an issue with their MPU they are often replacing it with a brand new Pascal or NiWumph System 1 MPU that has additional features and NVRAM already on the board. Third, even if someone wanted to keep the original board and upgrade to NVRAM, the original 5101 RAM is soldered to the board. So the market starts shrinking with all these factors not to mention the already niche market of pinball machines. I could be wrong, but I'd think most people with working boards aren't going to want to touch what's not broken and the percentage of people with the right equipment and skill to desolder the RAM and purchase an NVRAM adapter would be fairly small. That still didn't deter me from creating this prototype to work toward the goal of a functional adapter for System 1 machines though =)

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Back Into Design

Over the last month I had a chance to get back into "design mode" and work on some new prototype circuit boards. It feels good. I love the creativity that comes with designing anything and the reward is always in the satisfaction of having built something that works and actually seeing it work as you envisioned. Anyway, a bunch of new prototypes are coming in over the next few weeks and I'll probably be sending a few more off before I get back into some house projects again. A few of them will get made into products I'll sell over at Pinitech and some are for my own use when repairing machines. If I think I can build it relatively quick and it's going to save me a bunch of time, I'm going to build it. I also plan to get into some microcontroller programming sometime this year -- I've had a couple of development kits sitting around for a few years and I'm finally at a point I think I could benefit from the use of a microcontroller in some designs. Should be an interesting year.

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Previous Topics

01-13-2014
New high score, is that bad? What does that mean? Did I break it?

12-17-2013
December 2013 Update

06-09-2013
Bally/Stern Bench Setup

05-11-2013
More Boards On The Way

04-18-2013
Gottlieb NVRAM

04-04-2013
Classic Bally / Stern Pinball - Cabinet Switch Testing Tool (connects to MPU)


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