Screwy problem with an Ultimarc i-Pac Ultimate ...

[IAmDotorg]

I'm having a really screwy problem and I'm having problems even figuring out where to start to narrow it down.

I have finally gotten my cab mostly wired up, go the PC in it and started doing the configuration of the hardware bits of it. Its running HyperSpin, and stand-alone everything is working fine. Using test programs, generally, I've been able to light up buttons (RGB ones) and read their input.

Beyond that, everything seems to be working screwy. The IPU seems to only sporadically work when I power the PC up. Usually I can get it sort of working if I unplug/replug the USB, or force a reconfiguration in WinIPAC2. (The latter usually works more reliably).

So a few bizarre things:
- I'm having LEDs getting "stuck", in a bizarre way. The top-left (LED 1) LED output on the left side of the IPU and the top-left on the right side (LED 49) both frequently get stuck on. What is really bizarre -- if I set 0 brightness, they go full bright. If I set 127 (or whatever the max is), they go full dim. Other times they seem to work properly.
- The keyboard input only works about half the time. On some power ups I get no keyboard inputs from the buttons, on others I do. Usually a forced reconfig in WinIPAC2 fixes it, temporarily.

I'm using LEDBlinky with HyperSpin. To isolate problems with HS, I'm testing in a different user account that doesn't start it.

I was able to successfully set up the mappings of the buttons I've got plugged into the IPU in LEDBlinky, and it seems to work okay. (Although I have that "stuck LED" problem on those two buttons, as I mentioned above.)

Here's another weird thing -- Nothing related to LEDBlinky works in Hyperspin. I don't get any buttons lighting up, etc. So I decided to test with the LED animations in the LEDBlinky configuration tool. When I run a test in there, the LEDs seem to do their thing, in some cases going nuts blinking and stuff -- but then suddenly I'm getting an unstoppable stream of garbage keystrokes from it! Its like the board goes out to lunch and just starts sending keystrokes as fast as it can.

I'm totally baffled at what to even check. The board seems to work (ie, its not bad, as far as I can tell) but something *really* weird is happening with it. I'm not sure how to diagnose any of it.

[AndyWarne]

The LED issue is because you have "enable high current drivers" checked in WinIPAC V2.

One of the other issues (or maybe all) indicates a very early firmware version, I can send the latest.

andy@ultimarc.com

[IAmDotorg]

Hi Andy,

Sent you an e-mail! Thanks.