Leon Borre Aeneas Improved LED Board

Amelioration led-testboard.

This page describes a different board which I (Aeneas) have made. It's a combination of the led-boards Leon made for his solenoid and lamp driver tests. Why make 2 boards if you can combine them on one ?

The board itself is a universal board with 40 lines next to each other, each time islands of 3 holes. You'll need the 40 lines ! Why ? The lamp driver tester connector has 28 pins, and the solenoid tester has 12 distinct pins to test.. so 40 wires to connectors in total. It's also easy to see what leds are used only in the lamp test (the leds which have their connections and resistors immediately next to the other), and which ones are also used in the solenoid board test (those which have an extra line on the board free). A difference with Leon's boards is that this board only tests the pins of the solenoid board which are needed. Leon had connected every pin. With my board you can check if the pins that have to work, do work, but you don't know anything about the status of other pins (like ground).

You'll need 28 leds and 470ohm resistors. I have used different colors of leds as you can see.

For the lamp board test, all leds are used. It's simple.

For the solenoid board test, you have 12 leds which are used on 3 connectors. I have used different colors, why you can see on this schema:
pin 4: J2 - yellow
pin 5: J2, J1 - green
pin 8: J5 - red
pin 9: J2, J5 - yellow
pin 10: J2, J5 - yellow
pin 11: J2, J5 - yellow
pin 12: J2, J5 - yellow
pin 13: J5 - red
pin 14: J5 - red
pin 15: J5 - red

Connector J1 only uses 1 pin (pin 5), therefor I have used 1 green led. I have also connected one seperate, long wire to this led, on the picture you can see it at the right side of the led board, it's a yellow wire. This way it is possible to test J1-5 while the board is plugged into J2 or J5. (plugging in 1 wire is more easy and faster then the whole connector).
All the yellow leds ( 1 green) are used by J2.
Finally J5 uses red leds yellow (except pin 4).

It's still not perfect, but at least there is some difference in colors, so it more easy to see if something is wrong (ie you are testing J2 and a red led lights).

Note that on the picture there are 2 resistors missing (pin 27 and 28), they have to be added !

So, how to solder the connectors to the board ? For the lamp test, you'll need 28 pins in total. I didn't use the strips like Leon did but used connectors. Use one large 28-pin connector if you can find it, or seperate smaller ones. Note that there are 2 connectors of 28 pins and one of 23 pins, so if you use multiple connectors, try to have something like 2 of 12 (so you have 24 pins and cover this 23-pin connector) and one of 4, you don't want to have 2 connectors of 10 pins and then have to plug in a 3rd connector to test 1 or 2 pins.. If you do want to use the strip so you can plug it onto the board as Leon did, you don't need a universal board with 40 lanes as you'll only use 28.. but the connector for the solenoid board has to be connected on the top side then.

You see on the picture how the resistors and leds are soldered to the board. For leds which are only used in the lamp test, they're next to each other, each on their lane of the universal board. Leds also used in the solenoid test have an extra lane to which the wire to the connector goes. Watch out when soldering that you test the leds so they're in the right position ( 5 volt comes from the common wire in the back, ground comes from the connector), you don't want to have finished and then notice there's one not working because it's soldered backwards ! ( I did!!! not funny!)

Any questions about this board ?

email me at averhe@hotmail.com