USL CCR-100 CCAP receivers not working - ideas?

[Robert Hardage]

Hi,

We have USL CCR-100 receviers for CCAP.

Many of our units are not working. (3 out of 16 are, therefore our transmitters are OK.)

On a few of the bad units, I can discern a little bit of light/text in the corner of the screen, but the rest of the screen is black.

Almost all of the units were stored for a long period with batteries in them. In a number of the non-working units, but not all, there was visible leakage (white powder/potassium carbonate) in the chamber that I cleaned out as well as I could.

QSC will refurbish the units but it's expensive. It seems like that would be the only choice if there is damage to the display screen. Is there anything else that could be causing the problem and how would I look for it?

Much thanks to anyone who has experience with these units and can offer advice on how to proceed.

Robert,
Hanover NH

[Steve Guttag]

I haven't had that issue and we use them almost exclusively. Mostly, we see the swivel points get worn out and people find new, creative ways of breaking the battery compartment cover/insert it backwards and that sort of thing. I think we've had something like 2 displays that were bad...one i remember, recently had a line in it but it was within warranty.

I have never torn into them so I can't help you on the display or repair of it.

In the future, you might consider going the NiMH battery route and set them up as rechargeables.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Wow, that's a large number of units not working! Do they all have the same symptoms? At the risk of breaking more units, you could try moving a display from a bad unit to a good unit and see if it works. The display is glued to the vertical PCB, so you would have to try to free that from the PCB on a bad unit. On the good unit, you can unplug the display while leaving it glued in place, then plug in the suspected bad display to see if that works.

I have heard in some cases the 8 pin flash chip that holds the character bitmaps gets corrupted. If that's the case, that chip would need to be replaced.

You can tell if the CPU is working at all by seeing if the bootloader date code shows up when you follow the procedure at http://ftp.uslinc.com/Products/CCR-1...e%20140716.pdf . Unfortunately, it appears that neither the USL or QSC site currently shows the firmware. But just seeing the bootloader date code indicates something is happening.

There is a dual boost converter in the CCR. One generates 3.3V for most of the circuitry. The other generates something like 7V for the display (I don't have access to schematics anymore). Perhaps that boost converter has died.

In general, a field repair without a good supply of replacement parts could be difficult. The most common issue I've seen is corrupted bitmap flash, failed displays, and mangled USB connectors (using cheap USB cables for recharging batteries). Another common failure is leaked batteries corroding away the PCB from people trying to recharge alkaline batteries.

Good luck!

Harold

[Robert Hardage]

Thank you Harold,

This is great -- daunting, and way over my head technically... but this will be super interesting! I was getting as far as the battery chamber and was at an impasse -- Got into my first tear-down (of one of the bad units) today. Might be more of a learning experience for me than a producitve endeavor but that's ok -- we aren't re-opening until September and we only need to have several units working by then to meet demand. ...You say you don't have access to schematics "anymore" -- wonder if something like that is possible to hunt down on the internet?? (not on the QSC website, at any rate)

Thanks Steve, as well ... definitely going to switch to the rechargable batteries after this!

--Robert

[Harold Hallikainen]

Schematics are probably not available. They were on an internal engineering server at USL, but I don't have access to it anymore. Unless it's as simple as replacing a display, repair without schematics, parts, and test equipment could be difficult.

On quantity of devices, you not only need to "meet demand" but also need to meet the ADA requirements spelled out by the DOJ. I assume the number of units on hand is based on those requirements (see https://www.qsc.com/resource-files/w...equirement.pdf ).

Good luck!

Harold

[Robert Hardage]

Thanks -- the ADA requirements summary is very helpful!

[Daniel Fredrickson]

I'm very late coming into this... I stumbled across this looking for something else.

If it helps, I've had to send a few units in for repair, setting the RMA's up through our Cinema Services Provider. It runs about $315 per unit, as of August 2021 for basic repairs. It's still a decent bit cheaper than buying new ones.

[Robert Hardage]

Thanks Daniel for the feedback,

That seemed to be the best option for us as well...