Wheatnet-IP Blade Troubleshooting: A field service guide
The Wheatnet-IP blade system is the backbone of our IP infrastructure and the neural network of our operational systems. To date of this article, we have released 4 blade models, each one more advanced than it's predecessor. The purpose of this documentation is to highlight the various troubleshooting methods available to customers to try to field support their various models of Blade technology.
The following information is intended for skilled electronic technicians who understand principles and safety practices when operating around live circuitry. If you have never done so before, please do not proceed any further in this documentation. Contact a local engineer who can assist with necessary troubleshooting or contact tech support to request an RA for sending your unit into the factory for evaluation and repair by one of our technicians.
Blade 1 and Blade 2
For troubleshooting purposes, understand that Blade 1 and Blade 2 are essentially the same type of hardware. The 1 RU box had one solid PCB card inside on which all various components were mounted in sections, making up the power supply, cpu, and rear card or I/O section of the card.
There is one field troubleshooting technique that can be employed on these blades. If the blade is having front panel or power related problems, a user could take the lid off and, with power off, remove the front panel connector from the main card and power the blade back on. If the problem changes or goes away, this could point to a bad front panel card and those can be ordered from support.
Otherwise, these cards are not field repairable in any
way. If you have an early version blade with a problem, it will most
likely need to come home to the factory for evaluation of a potential
repair.
Blade 3 and Blade 4
Beginning with the release of the Blade 3, we began to produce the internal cards for blades independently, which provided us both with a more cost effective model of component/card production as well as a better and more serviceable end product as failed card assemblies could be swapped out for other replacement cards.
Red - Power Supply
Orange - CPU Card
Blue - Front Panel/VU Card
Green - Rear or I/O Card
For the purposes of this section, Blade 3 and Blade 4 troubleshooting while done the same, may have components or cards that look slightly different than those pictured in this instructional guide.
Some of the symptoms this guide will serve to help you identify and resolve are:
- Your blade does not power up completely or at all.
- Your blade powers up, but appears to flicker or blink rapidly.
- Your blade powers up for a time and reboots on it's own.
- Your blade is completely frozen, has no I/O, or front panel screen
The following recommendations are in order of simplicity and the order in which you should investigate your blade. However, based on your symptom, one issue may be more likely to be resolved by one remedy than another.
Start taking your blade out of service and to your work bench. Make sure the unit is powered off and then remove the screws for the lid and set them to the side.
CPU, VU, or Rear Card DONE light
Explanation: Take notice of the middle card, this is the CPU card. On that cards is a little red LED labelled DONE. If that LED lights up solid and won't extinguish at all after a power cycle (this can sometimes take 20-30 seconds to go out), your blade will have to come in for repair and you need to go no further. Similarly, the "Rear" or "I/O" card and VU card also have a DONE light. While less likely to bring the unit to it's knees, a solid DONE light on a rear card or VU card would mean those cards are inoperable and therefore the unit would have no I/O or display, respectively.
Symptom: This may present as a blade that is frozen or does not appear to boot at all. Additionally if the front panel screen is out or the I/Os do not work, those cards could be failed.
There's not too much wizardry to this. A solid DONE light indicates a programmatic failure with the internal circuitry of the card and cannot be field supported.
Analog IC chip failure - OpAmp SSM2142 or DRV134
Explanation: The analog IC chips that serve as the balanced audio drivers for analog outputs can internally fail by shorting or opening resulting in a pulling down of the power rail for the blade.
Symptom: Most commonly this will present to the user as a flashing or blinking front panel or Wheatstone Logo.
These IC chips are the only socketed chips in our blades, but it's important to note that they only exist inside our analog capable blades so this option is not available to any blade that does not have an analog output section. They are located on the rear card of the I/O blade and should be individually tested. Because these chips also cause audio output problems, they have their own procedure. The procedure and maps for identifying the chips can be reviewed here: https://support.wheatstone.com/portal/en/kb/articles/blade-3-blade-4-2142-line-driver-output-chip-maps
Take care that when you are removing chips, the power is removed from the unit and that your hands, tools and other debris are clear from the unit when powering it back up for testing
Extraordinarily hot chips, are probably shorted * Use Caution *
Front Panel VU card
Explanation: The front panel VU card has an OLED circuit that can also cause shorting to the power supply rail bringing down the blade. Since we're already in the internals of the blade, and we just finished checking chips, this is the next step.
Symptom: This can also present as a flashing or blinking blade, or the blade may not power up at all.
The Front Panel VU card is connected to the CPU card by a ribbon cable. To test whether or not you have a short on your front panel card, you simply power the unit off, remove this connector from the CPU card, set it to the side, and power the unit back up. If the unit comes on and stabilizes, you likely have a shorted from VU card.
The Blade Power Supply - a.k.a. SPS-20/SPS-3016
Explanation: The blade power supply can wear out just as any other supply can over the years. Typically this may be a result of getting hot and capacitors drying up. These are purchasable from our WheatStore HERE, or you can contact support. (Blade 4 uses a different supply - SPS-3016 - and must be ordered from support directly.)
Symptom: Power supplies can present in nearly every way except it is unlikely a bad power supply will cause your blade to become frozen. However, blade blinking, flashing, rebooting, not booting, or intermittently rebooting all could be signs of a bad power supply.
If you're fortunate enough to have a spare SPS-20 on your shelf, then that's great, you should grab that and swap it in. However, in most cases you will not so we've come up with a simple test for you, but you will have to borrow one more blade 3 to test it out. (Blade 3 and 4 supplies are not cross-compatible - only a two 3s or two 4s could do this procedure)
Grab another known working blade, bring it to your work bench and remove it's screws and lid. You are going to set the boxes side by side on the work bench with the power supplies parallel to one another but facing in the opposite directions. While both blades are off, you will unplug the white JST plug from the the CPU on the working unit and there will be just enough room for you to stretch it over to the blade with the suspected bad supply and plug it into that blade's CPU card. You can then initialize power to that supply and see if your unit stabilizes. If it does, you have successfully diagnosed a bad power supply.
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