LED Colors out of whack

[SCPD]

For some uncanny reason the red LED is too "bright" For a perfect white color I need to setup up white as R61 G255 B255 if I set it as R255 G255 and B 255 I get pink !

Also Yellow is Orange unless I turn the Red down to about R70 G255 B 000 etc...

Any ideas on this quirk .. I did the firmware update to 2,1 and it was after this I noticed it.


ANY COMMENTS APPRECIATED !!

 

[gmclam]

Tri-color LED

I have several scanners with the tri-color LED. Each of them has their own profile. Some have a very strong blue, while others a weak blue; for example.

The first scanner I bought with this feature was a PSR-500 and the yellow looked so ugly that I re-purposed it as pink. I use pink for medical channels. Not sure what I'd use yellow for anyway.

What you need to do is go into global setup and tune the LED colors to match what visually looks good to you.

 

[SCPD]

Yeah I did ----as it was right and now all of a sudden wrong! So I did edit the colors manually. My Medical is white (hey it was pink!)
I was just wandering if anyone else had the problem and a probable cause other than a resistor or internal chip driver changed.
Thanks for the comment !

 

[ratboy]

My PSR-500 is an old one, one of the original ones made, and my Pro 106 is a much later one, and both of them have LED "color drift". All the colors look fine, except white is now pink. I found this problem when I added the Ohio MARCSIP trunk system last week, setting the LED to flash white and getting pink, a color I had never seen before. I played around with the settings for the colors in WIN500, but since each one is different and I use the same file to set up both scanners, I just decided that my MARCSIP indicator will be pink, light pink on my 106, a more rosey shade on my PSR-500. Other than the color of the LED, they still receive identically. I'm guessing that this is aging/weakening of the blue and green elements is the cause of this. The PSR-500 has thousands of hours of use on it, I've definitely got my money's worth out of it, the 106 probably half or less as much. It's held up very well, no problems ever, except for the scratchy volume pot that started about day 10.

 

[SCPD]

Thanks, "Ratboy" I added the just installed Florence County SC P25 system and thats when I noticed it. So you basically have the same quirk so its not just me !! If we figure out anything I'll message back ! Scratchy volume pot.. same here ! could go inside with a diabetic needle left over from a cat but its not a big deal !! I did replace the busted belt clip with one from a HT1250 .. That was the best thing I did for it !!

 

[gmclam]

Tri-color LED

In addition to aging, I've found the balance of color intensity among the 3 colors of the tri-color LED to be QUITE varied new out of the box. While my first unit couldn't produce a decent yellow, the next unit I bought did. By then it was too late and I substitued pink anyway.

I keep different profiles for analog scanners (PSR-310/PSR-410) and digital (PSR-500/PSR-600) anyway, so that cuts the work of maintaining these in half. Additionally I like to preserve the "hit counts" in the radios, so I'll end up doing a download from scanner, update and upload to scanner when I make changes.

Otherwise, you really need to tune the LED from the scanner keypad anyway and I check that after any update.

 

[ratboy]

KYQ1952-Don't even bother, I've cleaned the pot quite a few times and it lasts about 2-4 days, it's just a junky pot in the first place.

gmclam-I've fixed a lot of 106's and PSR-500's and never seen one that didn't have a good balance on the three primary red/blue/green colors, yellow too, unless someone went in and messed with the default LED settings. I have some older devices with blue LEDs and they seem to dim a lot more quickly than a red or green on usually does. I have some red LEDS over 40 years old that are still very bright, but if you put a new one, or an old one with no time on it along side it, you can see the used one is much dimmer.

 

[Halfpint]

Hmmmm

My 2 PSR-600s, which have *3* digit SNs (Not counting the zeros.) have been pretty much running 24/7/365 since I purchased them don't seem to be having any LED colour problems. I *am* running *most* of the `channels' in the flash mode rather than continuous mode along with also having the display `levels' set to Dim which may be something that has helped, though. (I also went and opened one of the ones I bought as a `backups', threw in an abbreviated programming set of freqs/chnls as a check and by my, "she who must be obeyed's", "Urchin #1's", and "Urchin #2's" eyes *if* there was any difference it wasn't readily noticable. Of course, since they all were purchased at the same time and are all *3* digit SNs there could be later differences in the LEDs compared to later made units. [The manager of the store called me the day he received their first shipment and set aside 4 for me which I picked up later that day! *VB GRIN!*])

 

[gmclam]

gmclam-I've fixed a lot of 106's and PSR-500's and never seen one that didn't have a good balance on the three primary red/blue/green colors, yellow too, unless someone went in and messed with the default LED settings. I have some older devices with blue LEDs and they seem to dim a lot more quickly than a red or green on usually does. I have some red LEDS over 40 years old that are still very bright, but if you put a new one, or an old one with no time on it along side it, you can see the used one is much dimmer.

Sure I can hand-pick some high quality LEDs and replace them, but each of my scanners has come with less than ideal LEDs and that's my point (no factory quality control).

Of course, since they all were purchased at the same time and are all *3* digit SNs there could be later differences in the LEDs compared to later made units.

Mine were purchased from very early up until late last year (after GRE was long out of business). All were new units, and the LED quality varied significantly.

 

[Halfpint]

Sure I can hand-pick some high quality LEDs and replace them, but each of my scanners has come with less than ideal LEDs and that's my point (no factory quality control).

Mine were purchased from very early up until late last year (after GRE was long out of business). All were new units, and the LED quality varied significantly.

Like I said... I picked up a `bulk' order of *4* scanners shortly after they came out. I also said that I suspected that *later* versions could very well have assorted variations different from the 4 I bought.

Since you went and bought your's at fairly varied times it is also very possible that there *are* variations in both the`specs' and `tolerances' over those years compared to my original purchased scanners. BTW, I *did* `gulp' at the initial co$t when I bought my scanners but, now days I'm quite happy that I did buy them as I do not have to go running around all over the place looking for the backups that I now have. (Oh, yeah... I *have* kept them all updated as the updates came out so they are as `up to spec' as they can possibly be.)

 

[ratboy]

Since the LED is sort of "eye candy", not a really important feature, I would imagine that the LED is just an off the shelf item with RGB elements, and like the volume pot, and the BNC connector, bought for the least amount possible. I never paid anything close to full price, the first 106 I had I sold later on, after buying a Bearcat 396XLT from a friend who needed money. I soon sold it because I hated the digital audio decoding, and bought my present 106 brand new for about $250 from someone who received 2 of them for his birthday from his kids. The PSR was, if I remember right, $299. I had another PSR that was butchered up in an attempt at fixing a blown speaker. I got that one in trade for a Yaesu FRG-7 Shortwave receiver that I only paid about $100 for. It wasn't pretty, but I got it working fine. When I was fixing a lot of scanners, I got a lot of basket cases that were dead for parts radios that I was eventually able to get going after getting a second messed up one. Those all went on Ebay or were sold to locals for train or airband listening.

 

[DaveNF2G]

People here seem to be complaining about a problem for which GRE provided a built-in solution.

Rather than increase manufacturing cost by specifying very-low-tolerance LEDs, they designed the scanner so that the user could apply fine adjustments to the intensity and balance of the LED colors. Some folks are viewing a feature as a bug.

 

[Voyager]

I set mine much more dim since it would originally light up the entire car at night.

I also fine-tuned the colors.

 

[ratboy]

The only problem I have with tuning the colors is the PSR500 and PRO-106 won't take the same settings to make white "white", so I have to set up two files in WIN500 to do it, and it's just a hassle. I keep one radio, the PSR, at work, and the other one is mostly at home, or in the car. If I make a change at home, I send the file to one of my mail accounts to load to the radio at work, and vice versa. I'm going to dim the LED down, it's blinding at night when it goes off. For some reason, the blue is especially potent when it flashes in the dark. I had a set up with the LED dimmed a couple of years ago, but something corrupted it and I started over, and never bothered to dim it down again.