EM Drive Problem/Debug Help (solved)

[rocket8810]

Just built the EM drive, and put it into a 1590a box. It's my first 1590a build and I got something odd that I can't figure out.

When the pedal is engaged I get nothing but static, but I can control the volume. I checked continuity, and noticed that when the pedal is engaged there is no connection between input and output. But, by mistake I touched the box while testing continuity of the output and I got continuity, so it seems that the output jack is grounding. I've checked all the wiring, and board and can't find anything wrong. I'm going to make an audio-probe to further check, but not sure what to look for with it.



Everything is wired as it says, the only thing I did a little differently then normal was run the volume to ground directly to the switch as opposed to the output jack. Also, I used Marks offboard layout, as I always do.



Here's some pictures of the enclosure & board









Any ideas where or how this is happening? Any and all help will be much appreciated, i can't believe that such a small circuit would give me trouble like this.

[pappasmurfsharem]

In the bottom image, the long red wire that goes by the switch.

Is that your ground? Hard to tell

Where that that connecting too?

[rocket8810]

the red wire goes to the cathod of the led.

[Hemmel]

I think the problem might be with your switch.
Look at the last picture.
Not turning the picture, let's say the 9 lugs are
G H J
D E F
A B C

Why are lugs B and C connected ? That means that when you hit the switch one way, then B and C are connected, hit the switch again and now A, B and C are connected.
I would suggest you cut the connection between B and C.

[nocentelli]

It looks like IvIark's standard switch wiring: B,C and F are all connected to ground. This means B/C grounds the LED when the circuit is "on" (LED negative is connected to A), and F grounds the circuit input (E) in bypass. OP says he's got this switching system to work in the past.

[Hemmel]

Yeah I didn't notice the 2nd pic.
Disregard my post.

[Ice-9]

Have you checked that the transistor is in the correct way around, I would check that the effect works without all the bypass switching, ie remove it and just connect the jacks to the in and out connections.

I can't see properly in the picture, but it looks like your PSU jack is a 3 prong switched version, is this correctly wired ?

[rocket8810]

Thanks guys for the help, I really appreciate it.. the transistor was in correctly, but I did find the mistake. I kept thinking there was something wrong with my grounding, so I traced the whole grounding setup and found the problem. I'm embarrassed to say, but I screwed up the dc jack wiring. I had the ground attached to the positive lead, which would have been used by the battery if there was one. I totally feel like such a noob, but it happens.

[nocentelli]

.....it happens.

All the time, even if you've been building for years.

[rocket8810]

totally, and the worst part about it is that it was something that was so easy to overlook, which made this so much more annoying.