[me2016]

Please report what issues you found. It can be of help to anyone else who run in to similar issues.

[me2016]

Good you got it to work, and during this I guess you learned a lot about how things work – both electronics and software wise.

I’m curious as to the stall issue so please report back what that is all about.

[me2016]

So, lets go through the problems one by one;

– L103 display is not working
That means that Common on pin 18 on the digit does not have a connection to COM6/pin 8 on ht18k33. The path includes pin 24 on the jumper cable.

– Displays do not show all segments
Pretty much the same as above, just a different trace that’s broken. Identify the segment missing and look at the schematic as to what pin it is on. Then follow that pin all the way through the jumpercable to ht16k33.

– Plugboard seems not connected
You state above that p201-p203 fails regarding 5V and GND, that is why it’s not working. You need to fix that connection, see schematic for pins to connect.

– When turning to reflector mode system seems to get into a loop
Hard to guess, possible because of a short somewhere in the rotor but why only in reflector mode? The logic is pretty much the same for all the different modes.
Fix the other things first, then see if it’s still a problem and of so provide some more details.

– Slow response in run mode
How slow is “slow”? if maybe 5sec then it could be a problem with the sound board. Do you have sound? It is possible that it thinks you have a sound board and wait for the sound to finish before moving on.

[me2016]

Every PCB is tested during manufacturing to have the correct connections so that should be way low on the suspect list. The most common issue I seen is bad soldering to the level that the solder holes and/or traces are broken. Had to add some extra wires due to that on a board I fixed up earlier. Don’t forget to verify the soldering of pins on the arduino it self (been there, did just solder in the corners and things didn’t work to good until I soldered in the rest).

It’s a dual layer board so all traces are on the top or the bottom, nothing in the middle of the board. You have the schematics of where all connections should be or not. With that you can verify connections and add extra wires as needed.
For example, as a test you could solder two wires directly from the arduino to the pins on the ht16k33 chip and see if you get some life signs from it that way.

[me2016]

No one else in Netherlands that ordered a meinEnigma but that is probably not needed. Try to look up some close by electronics club and when they have meetings. I’m involved in some here in town and it does sometimes show up people with some electronic issue that they can’t solve because they don’t know any electronics.

[me2016]

A low resistance (<2 ohm) is normal and not a problem along a trace like that. Did just check and and on my working meinEnigma it is 1.5ohm.
For the software to find the chip it need only 4 wires to work, power, ground, A5(SCL) & A4(SDA). Now if any of those wires are shorted between each other it's of course a problem also so please verify that it's not unexpected shorts.
If you have a oscilloscope you can look at the signal on A4/A5.
I would have no problem taking a look at it if it wasn't for the shipping cost.

[me2016]

Any luck/progress ?

[me2016]

Is that missing connection on the same board or between p201 and p101 ?
Verify that the cable is ok, pin to pin on the boards (p201 to p101)
If broken on the lamp and keyboard, try to follow the track to see where it is broken.
Now when all connections except com5 & com6 works, what do you get on the serial port? Does it still complain about no chip ?

[me2016]

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[me2016]

Just checking you are alert 🙂
Typo, 23 & 24 as the schematic states.

[me2016]

Power – set the DMM to a range that includes 5V DC, then measure on the pins.
I2C – Most modern DMMs have setting where it beeps when it is a short. If not you can just set it to measure resistance. Then (with no power to the board) check the connection between the pins. Also, check that it is _no_ connectivity between SCL/SDA and any other point that looks suspect.

[me2016]

The “No IC detected” means it can’t talk to L02 – HT16K33 and with that it assumes it’s standalone and doesn’t test anything else = no sound. I know that the chip is soldered on properly because I did ring it up to the connector before shipping it. You need to verify that all soldering points on the nano and the ones for the jumper cable are good.
The path involved is gnd, +5, SCL (A5) & SDA (A4). With power on, verify power between cable connector (p101 & p201) pin 25(gnd) and pin 23(+5V).
Remove power, then verify continuity from nano to chip for i2c

SCL: Nano pin 25(A5) -> p101 pin 19 -> p201 p19 ->ht16k33 pin 26
SDA: Nano pin 23(A4) -> p101 pin 21 -> p201 p21 ->ht16k33 pin 27

[me2016]

Hard to troubleshoot without more info. For a start connect to the serial port and see if you get anything out that way. If nothing try to remove the arduino nano from the board and see if anything comes then.

[me2016]

For a start – sorry that the N plug didn’t work. I did ring it up but it was before I had a good test jig so I must have pushed down the pin or something when I tested it.

As for uploading your own software, it is a few steps but they are not that tricky. Hard to diagnose without the first part of the message but I’m guessing it complains about some missing files.
Jeff Tranter did a serie of blogposts around meinenigma and the software part starts at
http://jefftranter.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-meinenigma-enigma-machine-kit_8.html.
The very high level is that you need to
1 – download and install the arduino IDE from https://www.arduino.cc/en/main/software
2 – Download the meinenigma code from https://github.com/lpaseen/meinEnigma
(I guess you done 1 & 2 already)
3 – download two libraries
HT16K33 Arduino code: https://github.com/lpaseen/ht16k33
AltSoftSerial Arduino library: https://github.com/PaulStoffregen/AltSoftSerial
The libraries need to be saved to the arduino library path which is (on windoze) My Documents\Arduino\libraries\. See https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries#toc5 for more details around that.

[me2016]

After a lot of more troubleshooting and fixing #32 is now working.
Issues found where bad soldering of SMD chips and broken traces (due to soldering damage) in the board. After fixing that it is now working.
Troubleshooting steps involved ring up the board. That means verify that every trace works all the way from the chip to the end with help of DMM continuity testing using the schematic for guide on how things are suppose to be connected.

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