YOU ARE IN: LOGIK IR100 REPAIRS

We ARE here! There is a moan on one of the news groups that we don't answer our emails. Well anyone can be busy or have a bad day but we DO try to answer every email that we receive - within a few days at most. So if you email and don't get a reply please don't just moan. Perhaps we didn't get it, check that you have actually sent the email and it's not stuck in your out box - then try to send it again.
Also check that our reply isn't trapped with your ISP as spam. Thanks!

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2013

A FEW LOGIK IR100 PARTS NOW AVAILABLE

As I am no longer able to do repairs I have decided to dispose of a few Logik IR100 spare parts that we have lying about. It's "First come, first served".
Sorry, we do NOT have any spare Reciva IR100 control boards for sale at present!

You are solely responsible for fitting parts purchased. If you don't feel confident, don't buy.
This is just a way to help people - we are NOT a business.

WILL MY LOGIK IR100 WORK WITH THE THREE MiFi DONGLEill?

We were recently asked this question and it's a good one so we thought we would try to find out for you.

The MiFi is a small dongle sized device that includes a Three mobile internet connector and a four way wireless router. It is designed to enable you to connect your wireless computer to the Three internet when either away from home or if you simply prefer to use the Three wireless network.

To cut a long story short Three block several ports on their connection, some of which are used by the Reciva Barracuda control module.

So "no" the Logik IR 100 Radio will not work when using a MiFi for internet connection. Sorry!

LOGIK IR100 LINES MISSING OR DIMMED ON THE DISPLAY

As this involves a lot of disassembly WE WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE if the following suggestion doesn't work for you, so please only attempt it when the radio is otherwise useless. Having said that this is not the most difficult repair either. It just requires care.

As these somewhat cheaply made radios age they are beginning to develop some of the faults common to ordinary radios that come from China. One of these is a display that is either corrupted or has lines dim or missing. Below is a picture of a humdinger of a fault that appeared on one of these radios whilst in our workshop. As you will see not only is the very top line dim but the bottom two lines are actually showing as double height Cyrillic! This just shows what a microprocessor controlled display can do when it goes iffy!

An unusually bad display in our workshop. Apart from the double height
third line, if you look at the very top of the S in the display you will see that it is slightly dim.

Now whilst this problem may look catastrophic it can in many cases be fixed without even switching on a soldering iron. You DO however need to be confident enough to open the case and then completely disassemble your radio. If it's just one or two lines missing or even just dim then if you are not confident we suggest that you leave well enough alone!

If you do decide to go ahead then we won't waste your time with all the safety rules, take them as read. Just make sure your radio is completely unplugged from the mains (doh!) and probably best left for a few hours so that the capacitors can discharge.

To attempt a fix of this problem you need to get at the display module which is right at the front. We have some notes here which although written for another problem on these radios may well be of help to less experienced people. View it here http://www.horstedkeynes.com/openir100.html .

Once the display board is removed from your radio you will see 6 tabs that we have circled in red. You need to loosen these tabs, wiggle the display a bit to wipe the contacts and then retention them. That's the fix! You see the electricity gets to the display through some "conductive sponges". These are very clever devices that were first used in pocket calculators and are sandwiched between the display itself and the back of the display control board shown above. The advantage of using a conductive sponge is the manufacturer saves many tiny electrical connections, the disadvantage is that is all that there is to conduct the electricity. Over time the sponges begin to deteriorate and flatten so you get poor connections, often improving as the radio heats up. To effect a semi-cure you have to loosen and then put the display back where it was but now under a little more tension. This should buy you a few more years' use.

Shown above are the six tabs on the back of the display module that require re-tensioning. The four black blobs are, believe it or not, complete microprocessors that decode the data from the Barracuda Module into letters and numbers. There are probably 7 or 8 million transistors under each one! There is a lot to go wrong in these radios and this is why you can get problems like double height Cyrillic symbols!

After reassembly it is quite common to get no display showing at all or perhaps a line that is lit but not showing any letters. This is caused by the microprocessor crashing.  To fix this you need to reboot the entire radio from the Barracuda module. The easiest way to do this is plug in the radio to the mains but after having removed the network card from the USB socket. With luck you will then see "No network Card Present" bright and clear on the display. Do NOT plug the network card back in until you have switched the radio off. Yes we know that some people advise plugging it in as the radio starts up. In our experience this is one great way to blow the Barracuda module entirely as the USB is not buffered and gets its data straight off the Barracuda board control lines. Another cost saving of a couple of cents for three transistors that causes bricked radios!

Please let us know how you get on for you and if it works a few pounds Paypalled to us to help cover our hosting costs would be greatly appreciated!

Remember as stated above only try this suggestion if you know what you are doing or have nothing to lose such as with an otherwise unusable radio. The fault above is to try to fix a corrupted display, a totally blank display on a radio that does not even light up - that's a "bricked" radio - will NOT be cured by the above procedure.

Read on for details of this rather common problem.

 DEAD "BRICKED" LOGIK IR100 RADIOS - A POSSIBLE CAUSE DISCOVERED

We believe that we may have found one of the main reasons why these radios fail so often and why when they fail they frequently "brick", i.e. go completely dead with no display and no sound. Once dead these radios seem to stay dead!

The Reciva Barracuda board inside these sets is the absolute heart of the Logik IR radio, it controls every function from decoding the sound, working the display, talking to the internet  to decoding the volume control. When this board fails the radio goes completely dead with no display at all and of course no sounds to listen to. The little red light inside also SOMETIMES goes out but we have recently discovered that some different makes of module stay alight.

This Reciva board requires two voltages to work, one at 3.3 Volts and the other at 5 Volts. This power comes from the radio power supply board fixed to the rear cover via a ribbon cable. This power supply board is made to the lowest standard that we have seen for ages, the soldering is poor, the components are cheap and put in at any odd angle, and the supply voltages go from this power supply to the Reciva board via ribbon cables that are held in place at one end with hot melt glue! Like the rest of the Logik made parts it's a complete and utter mess.

Now the 5 Volt supply is controlled by a large 3 pin 1 Amp regulator on the power supply board; the regulator is screwed to a large heat sink to help keep it cool. Heat sinks are made from heavy lumps of aluminium so they should be fixed to the circuit board first and the regulator then attached and soldered in. This makes a solid module which is secure and safe. In these sets the heatsink is often not attached to the board at all (or the fixing is lose) so the 3 thin regulator wires support not only  the weight of the regulator itself but that of the  heatsink too. It is therefore not surprising that these wires come lose or even break causing the 5 Volt supply to become intermittent and eventually fail. When this happens the one missing voltage puts the Reciva Barracuda control board into a funny mode (often starting with a "gurgling" or "bubbling" type of sound) and the radio switches itself off never to return! Thereafter the radio completely fails and stays completely dead and useless. In modern parlance it is "bricked"! Fixing a bricked Logik IR100 is not easy as it requires the processor to be reprogrammed. We did have a way to reflash the boards but are unfortunately no longer able to do this.

There is sometimes a warning that this failure is about to happen when the radio makes loud crackling type sounds, for some odd reason often when listening to a pre recorded "listen again" file. If this crackling starts on your radio get it fixed immediately by a competent engineer or start to look for a new internet radio! At this stage the repair takes just a blob of solder and some heatsink compound. This fault is one reason why you should never buy one of these radio from eBay when it is described as having an intermittent fault! The seller may well not know that their radio is about to expire so how can they warn you - that's even if they wanted to!

Once the radio stops lighting up, even if you get the original connection resoldered it's too late, the control board stays dead as it is corrupted and stuck in this funny mode which prevents it booting up. We believe this one lose 5 Volt connection caused by poor construction and poor design is the main reason why the Logic IR100 radio is becoming so unreliable.

So whose fault is all this?

The Chinese radio maker must take the main responsibility as their construction is dreadful with many poorly fitted parts that require manual resoldering after automated assembly, and the design using glue to hold wires to the board must be deplored. But the designers of the Reciva processor board must also take some responsibility as their board requires three separate voltages to work. One is already converted from another on the board but why chose to have the other supply come such a long way? Had they placed one more power regulator on the Reciva control board itself it might have cost them 50p more to manufacture, but these radios controls could be have been run from a single 5Volt supply which if it failed would not be terminal. It's only when one voltage fails while another stays working that the problems start! There would in our humble opinion, be far fewer dead logic radios in land fill sites or boot sales had this been thought of.

If your radio has "bricked" we would love to hear if you had the warning symptoms described above. And if you have managed to fix a "bricked" radio naturally we'd love to know how you managed it! We believe that a micro processor expert might be able to make some spare cash reflashing these "bricked" Reciva modules, by copying from a working set (although the electronically stored serial numbers would need sorting out). How about it? Please email logik@horstedkeynes.com with your thoughts or suggestions as to how we can get these great little radios working again.