{"id":1263,"date":"2013-02-24T21:38:59","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T02:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/?p=1263"},"modified":"2013-02-24T21:38:59","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T02:38:59","slug":"repairing-a-projector-with-tinted-and-washed-out-display","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/?p=1263","title":{"rendered":"Repairing a Projector with Tinted and Washed-Out Display"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My employer came to me with a little project. The office projector stopped working properly after someone touched the pins of the VGA video cable, and presumably released ESD energy into the projector. The picture&#8217;s colours were all tinted and washed out!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Before.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1267\" alt=\"Before\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Before-237x300.jpg\" width=\"237\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Before-237x300.jpg 237w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Before-810x1024.jpg 810w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Before.jpg 1539w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 237px) 100vw, 237px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Note that the bottom monitor is displaying the same colour pattern<br \/>\nas the projector. Grey is completely missing!<\/p>\n<p>He asked me if I&#8217;d like to take a look at it. My answer, as would be expected, was &#8220;of course!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Boot-Screen.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1268\" alt=\"Boot Screen\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Boot-Screen-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Boot-Screen-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Boot-Screen-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the loading screen and on-screen menus were fine, so I knew the issue had to be localized to the VGA input. This was confirmed when I plugged something into the yellow composite port, and the colours were also fine.<\/p>\n<p>I began by doing a factory reset, to ensure that colour temperature profiles were not to blame. This changed nothing, and after verifying the warranty was already expired, I cracked it open.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Open.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1270\" alt=\"Open\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Open-283x300.jpg\" width=\"283\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Open-283x300.jpg 283w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Open-967x1024.jpg 967w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Open.jpg 1836w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 283px) 100vw, 283px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Because I believed ESD to be the cause, I was looking for any visible signs of component failure, but expecting to see none. High-voltage static discharge can cause invisible damage to many components within a fraction of a second.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Top-of-PCB.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1273\" alt=\"Top of PCB\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Top-of-PCB-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Top-of-PCB-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Top-of-PCB-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My inspection of the exposed side of the board revealed no obvious failures. With the cover off and the projector on, I performed the highly scientific tap and vibration test to ensure a loose component or connection wasn&#8217;t to blame. Finally, I moved my search to the underside of the board.<\/p>\n<p>Right in front of the VGA connector were the 3 terminating resistors. These 75 ohm resistors have the same value as the impedance of the VGA cable. The reason these values are &#8220;matched&#8221; is so that the signals do not reflect back into the cable. These reflections reduce the quality of the signal by cancelling part of it out.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Burnt-Resistors.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1269\" alt=\"Burnt Resistors\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Burnt-Resistors-300x245.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Burnt-Resistors-300x245.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Burnt-Resistors-1024x839.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Burnt-Resistors.jpg 1944w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the resistors for the Green and Blue channels have a little brown spot. It looked to me like a visible sign of failure. With a multimeter, I confirmed that these resistors were out of spec: the green channel was at 590 ohms, and the blue channel at 330 ohms. The red channel was still fine, at 75.6 ohms.<\/p>\n<p>The repair for this is quite simple: remove the two old resistors, and install two new ones! However, I do not have access to a supply of surface mount components. I do however have access to plenty of through-hole parts, and decided to first confirm that replacing the resistors would fix the display.<\/p>\n<p>The closest values I had were either 68 or 82 ohm resistors. I chose the 82 ohm resistors, because I&#8217;d rather let less current pass than more.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quick-Test.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1272\" alt=\"Quick Test\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quick-Test-300x244.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quick-Test-300x244.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quick-Test-1024x833.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quick-Test.jpg 1944w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For a quick test, I soldered one leg of each resistor to the green and blue channel pins of the VGA connector, and touched the other legs to ground. I powered it up and&#8230; success!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_221623.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1274\" alt=\"IMG_20130223_221623\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_221623-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_221623-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_221623-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The colours were no longer washed out and tinted: everything looked as it should. I soldered the resistors permanently, and reassembled the projector.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Almost-Installed.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1266\" alt=\"Almost Installed\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Almost-Installed-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Almost-Installed-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Almost-Installed-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The two colour test pictures below have not been edited. They were uploaded just as they were when I copied them from my camera. My camera&#8217;s white balance does seem to lean towards the cool colours though.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"__mceDel\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225400.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1275\" alt=\"IMG_20130223_225400\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225400-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225400-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225400-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225421.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1276\" alt=\"IMG_20130223_225421\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225421-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225421-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_20130223_225421-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">As you can see, grey is back!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For 50 cents in parts, and a few hours of poking around, I&#8217;d say it was worthwhile.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Projector.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1271\" alt=\"Projector\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Projector-300x181.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Projector-300x181.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Projector-1024x620.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Projector.jpg 1143w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My employer came to me with a little project. The office projector stopped working properly after someone touched the pins of the VGA video cable, and presumably released ESD energy into the projector. The picture&#8217;s colours were all tinted and washed out! Note that the bottom monitor is displaying the same colour pattern as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,138],"tags":[283,96,102,284,281,282],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-projects","category-work","tag-esd","tag-projector","tag-repair","tag-tint","tag-vga","tag-viewsonic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1280,"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions\/1280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}