One column in Ledtricks not working

[Penfold]

Hello all.

I was just wondering what people have done to correct a problem that I noticed for Halloween where one of the columns is not lighting up. Grant it I have had this running great for the last two years. I have it in standalone mode to display the station I am broadcasting on. The first thought that came to my mind is maybe I have a pinched patch cable in there. Either that or I have a cold solder joint. I figure after Halloween I will troubleshoot the sucker then. I was just wondering if anyone else had this problem and how did you go about fixing it?

[LabRat]

Any other ghosting on that column? Sometimes a single bad LED (in the column) will result in the column not displaying properly.

[Penfold]

Believe it or not I remember seeing ghosting throughout the entire panel. It's not really all that noticeable. I didn't not see any ghosting dedicated to that one column though. I will give it a closer look tonight.

[Penfold]

UPDATE:

Last night when I turned the panel on all LEDs were pumping. The column that originally was dead was now pumping away. I may have a gremlin in my panel. I won't know until I turn it on again tonight. I will see.

[chalker]

Just thought I'd use this thread to document a strange cause for 1 column not working I discovered (in the hopes that if it happens to someone else they don't have to waste as much time as I did debugging it). The problem for me turned out to be that the very thin plastic dividers at the end of the male RJ-45 connector (that separate the 8 individual metal contacts) were slightly out of alignment. This prevented one of the springy wires in the female RJ-45 port from making solid contact with one of the male contacts (and thus preventing 1 column from lighting up). Using my fingernail I was able to align the plastic dividers properly, and with some robust wiggling of the connector as I put it into the jack I could hear the one springy wire 'snap' into place.