hey everyone! hope i can get some help here; for some background, i’ve had this octatrack since 2018 and it’s never given me any issues. i have used it very frequently (at least twice a week) and today i just turned it on and found the 3, 4, 5, 6 perpetually on and with these weird colors, except for 6. the buttons respond just as usual but the lights wont go away. admittedly i’ve used a generic power supply with the exact specifications of the elektron one for almost a year and a half and i’ve never had issues with it. i tried it with another power supply that i know works on my OT and it powered on and still had these lights on. i also noticed that pressing the T2 button makes trigger 1 and 9 light up. its almost like something was shortening the LED’s?
does anyone have a clue what could be going on and if it can be fixed by a good technician? i live in the caribbean so shipping stuff out is very difficult for me. thanks in advance!
edit: what you see at the beginning of the video is the test mode of the OT, all lights should light up in the same color and turn off according to the mode you select. as you can see they are always there even when powering up the unit normally.
Hi, it will probably cost less to replace the upper PCB which contains all the buttons and controls than the cost of paying a tech to diagnose and fix the problem. There are a number of posts on here for different elektron devices showing a similar behavior, and it’s always hardware related.
I’d start by going to your account on the elektron website and contact them to ask for a quote on purchasing the control board for ot mk2 shipped to your location. It’s something that you could probably replace yourself, as it doesn’t require any special soldering or electrical skills to do, just attention to detail.
If someone in your family is skilled with diagnosing issues with circuit boards then you could have them take a look, but identifying the problem is only part of the issue, since elektron has no consumer level service guide it could be difficult to identify a suitable replacement component if it’s not clearly labeled.
You could always send it to them for repair, but it sounds like that would be costly for you just to ship it to their repair center. It’s more than likely part of the upper PCB that I mentioned which has the fault and which needs to be repaired, therefore replacing the entire assembly will skip the diagnosis and detailed repairwork. So, probably good to start by getting the price quote and go from there. They may also assist you in some additional process of elimination troubleshooting.
generic power supply with the exact specifications
even those can break or produce failure output.
So if you have, time to dust off your voltage meter and use it.
As power supply is the only variable you have different, it is also more likely than just a PCB failure out of the blue. (apart from the rare case it can also fry, well electronics…)
At least you have symptoms very visual… (to point you on the bright side of your problem).
here a math hint: T2 button corresponds to (bitmask 00000010 == 0x2 = 2) which is when counting from 0 the 3rd value and the 3rd option for step editor (not in live edit mode) is Quick Mute, which would explain the light up 1 and 9 buttons.
also check power supply in the house by the way, it can happen that the base frequency of the entire grid just dropped or speed up for some reason… (dont know whats your frequency in the caribbean 50 or 60hz). maybe a storm hit a transformer station or some damage in your region messes with the freq… Guessing there are emergency webpages to see if the grid is stable.
@Shredrr hey thanks! ok, i’ll check how the PSU is doing, but like i mentioned, i tried with another one i have that works fine with the OT and it gives me the same issues
i turned it on to record you a video of the T2 behavior and it actually seems to have gotten worse now, more buttons are lighting up. after i stopped recording holding down T2 lit up 1 and 12.
is my OT dying ? T_T or like @shigginpit mentioned, i might need a whole new upper PCB
good catch, time to take a day off, even if that hurts to stop working, is better than to fry your electronics by accident. Also not sure how PSU work in depth, to be precise i don’t know if the base frequency of the grid affects their output… if so, a different PSU would likely by a grid frequency drop produce a slightly different outcome in the visuals… as the base freq literally influences the internal clock electronics that are needed to catch digital interrupts (button states)
Well, just my opinion because shredrr has more technical knowledge about the OT, but if you or someone you know understands his hint and can troubleshoot based on that then maybe you can just fix what you have!
If you don’t know and you’re starting from a zero foundation, it will probably be a complicated thing for you to diagnose and fix by yourself. In test mode, there is a hardware failure indicated by the way not all of the lights change to their different colors in sync.
Those tests where all lights come on green or red etc, are partially to check the LED lights which have red green and blue elements and can blend them, like if you hold down 3 trigs (I think 3,4,5 but can’t remember) all lights should come up white during test mode.
So since test mode is like a safety mode and your hardware is not passing those most basic tests, it is likely that somewhere in the circuit there is a component or more than one that needs to be replaced.
The reason I say the PCB is not because the entire PCB has magically gone bad, it’s because if you don’t have the ability to diagnose and repair at a reasonable cost, then you take the road which is least expensive and most certain to fix the problem.
Then until the next time something breaks, you can study electronics repair and be prepared. If you have time to do such a thing in your life. If you don’t, then you know that if your car gets a flat and you can’t find the hole in the tire, sometimes you just replace the tire.
thanks… well i always try to apply logic… can’t help it.
To know if the PCB is the culprit you’d measure its supply and maybe output first anyway.
The grid base frequency hint is a classic issue as most forget that even computers run in different speed when the grid freq wobbles, and it does wobble a lot each day, and in some rare cases it can fall out of the expected specs and then voila you have all quartz running in wrong speed driving processes to fast or to slow and suddenly interrupts are not in tune anymore and button states expose rubbish…
i’m not really gonna pretend i understood what this means, but it honestly fascinates me, how do you know those technical aspects of the octatrack? i’d like to know more, even if i dont really quite get the whole picture
meanwhile i get this sorted im going to see if my friend can lend me his OT for a while. i really appreciate the help!
lol, pandemic lock down had its effect on spare time to dig deep in the OT universe.
Precise the T1 to T4 and i guess T5 to T8 produce a bitmask (on/off pattern) when you hit them, and the corresponding number is used in firmware of course, most machines do it that way.
Same idea for the step editor, 1…8 and 9…16 are two numbers that express a bitmask.
momento… just made bingo in my head. If your computer runs smooth as if nothing happened the power grid freq issue is less likely, isn’t it. Or do you solely write via phone in electronauts…
Yeah, I bet the OT says in its head when it is first switched on:
“Oooh! Here we go, here we go, nah nah nah, check out all my colors, woohoo! Ooh wavey, I move those colors back and forth all sexy and shit. I’m pretty peacock… Ah shit, that’s all I get to do, fuck…!”
i have a laptop so im afraid i really wont see much change in that sense, but my country does indeed have a very infamous electrical system. im gonna take it tomorrow to the studio i work at where it has cleaner power but i really dont see why at home i would have these issues. i’ve always had my gear connected to an UPS for protection for years and never had issues
When in test mode, if you hold down trig 3,4,5 simulataneously, does the color spectrum of the buttons attempt the shift to white? In that event if it does, do some of them stay purple or other mismatch colors?
I could be wrong of course, OT may have a different behavior but most elektron devices work this way in test mode. The first 2 trigs do the pixel test on the screen (all on / all off), usually the others shift the visible spectrum of the LED’s and holding down the 3 together turns white.
I just don’t have an OT here to test on, @error.eyes does your MK2 do that in test mode?
i’m not sure if that button combo works, couldn’t get all the lights to go white, but here’s a longer video of it in test mode
also, i’ve noticed that while the OT is booting up, the T2 issue does not happen when the loading screen for the files is up, im not sure what could that hint towards? a logic issue in the PCB?
It may be that when you hit 6 on OT it displays white, looks like that might be the case. Either way, if the function of the machine itself as well as the sequencer and screen behavior is all normal, it certainly seems to point at a fault specific to the control board. The test mode error test, does it give any specific results or just “0 errors found”?
