PSR500 Alert Light Problems

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mfn002

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My PSR500 has been having problems maintaining the color of the alert light on certain channels. When one of them comes up, it will flicker between various colors and the correct assigned color, although most of the time it seems to stick with some sort of weird purple color. It seems to have the most problems with red, though it also seems to do it somewhat with blue. Any ideas as to why this might be happening?
 

SCPD

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LED Problem

Had the same problem with mine when I got it.
I sent it in for repairs, under warrenty.
 

Arizona_Scanner

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Makes me wonder if the lights on my 106, 197 and 800 are all going to die eventually. Don't LEDs live virtually forever? Maybe I need to consider using the LED more sparingly than I do...
 

mfn002

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Sounds like the Tri-Color LED may be going bad or have a bad solder joint on it.

Mike

The scanner is pretty old (2007) and I have only been using it to monitor some channels that my other scanners can't pick up, which means I have it on several hours a day. I suspect it might be the controller chip that controls the LED colors, since I haven't actually taken it off of my desk since I got my 396XT.
 

gmclam

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Tri-Color LED

My PSR500 has been having problems maintaining the color of the alert light on certain channels.
I suspect it is not "channel related" but is "color related". In other words, perhaps the green works fine but there are problems with the others.

You can go to the GLOB menu and scroll down to find the LED settings. Color 0 is typically Black with all colors off. Pick one of the settings and adjust it and watch to see what it does. I went thru the ranges of each primary color and found that some values simply don't produce an output or are no different than the prior/next value.

00 means the color is fully off, and FF means it is fully on. I found that my Blue LED would not come on until the setting was around 30. So any value from 00 to 2F produced no Blue output. And some settings seem to be on the edge and would produce a flicker result.

Note that the factory defaults use combinations where each LED color is set to either 00 or FF. It's nice they gave us control, but what I've seen so far is that even though there are 256 levels, you're lucky to get more than a couple of usable settings.

Yes LEDs do last forever, but they can be destroyed. I wouldn't worry about "using them up" as they don't compare to (incadescent) lights. When they fail it is a failure, not because they are "worn out".
 

garys

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I've also found that what shows in ARC500 (and maybe other programs) is not always the same as what shows up when programmed into the scanner. Using your tips, I was able to adjust the scanner colors to where I wanted them and then uploaded the data to the program and saved it there. Hopefully next time i download to the scanner, it won't change.



I suspect it is not "channel related" but is "color related". In other words, perhaps the green works fine but there are problems with the others.

You can go to the GLOB menu and scroll down to find the LED settings. Color 0 is typically Black with all colors off. Pick one of the settings and adjust it and watch to see what it does. I went thru the ranges of each primary color and found that some values simply don't produce an output or are no different than the prior/next value.

00 means the color is fully off, and FF means it is fully on. I found that my Blue LED would not come on until the setting was around 30. So any value from 00 to 2F produced no Blue output. And some settings seem to be on the edge and would produce a flicker result.

Note that the factory defaults use combinations where each LED color is set to either 00 or FF. It's nice they gave us control, but what I've seen so far is that even though there are 256 levels, you're lucky to get more than a couple of usable settings.

Yes LEDs do last forever, but they can be destroyed. I wouldn't worry about "using them up" as they don't compare to (incadescent) lights. When they fail it is a failure, not because they are "worn out".
 

gmclam

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I've also found that what shows in ARC500 (and maybe other programs) is not always the same as what shows up when programmed into the scanner. Using your tips, I was able to adjust the scanner colors to where I wanted them and then uploaded the data to the program and saved it there. Hopefully next time i download to the scanner, it won't change.
My scanner produced a horrible looking YELLOW color. So I went through the setup I described previously to optimize the color mixing. Then I took the values from the scanner's display and hand entered them into the software. You certainly can download too.
 

mfn002

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Thanks for the info. I would like to mention, however, that it was working just fine up until a few months ago. As I said before, the two colors that seem to have the most problems are red and blue. It now seems to show a pinkish color instead of red or blue.

I might also want to add something else: The "UP" portion of the round keypad doesn't work at all. I can press on it as hard as I can and it won't do anything. Is this scanner just wearing out or something?
 

garys

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My scanner produced a horrible looking YELLOW color. So I went through the setup I described previously to optimize the color mixing. Then I took the values from the scanner's display and hand entered them into the software. You certainly can download too.

Which software? I'm using ARC500 and don't see a way to enter those values in by hand.
 

DonS

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They should be in some kind of "global" or "general" settings area. There should be a list of 8 colors, with RGB values for each.

(I'm not familiar with ARC500, so I don't know if it actually makes thes settings available. I do know that other PSR-500 software allows the user to specify the exact values.)
 

garys

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They should be in some kind of "global" or "general" settings area. There should be a list of 8 colors, with RGB values for each.

(I'm not familiar with ARC500, so I don't know if it actually makes thes settings available. I do know that other PSR-500 software allows the user to specify the exact values.)

ARC500 has that, but I don't know if I can enter the hex settings that I find in the Pro 197 on screen programming menus. 00FFDC for example.

ARC500 allows RGB number entry or use of a slider to change colors. The problem I have is that the colors displayed in the software don't match what ends up showing on the LED. That might even be an issue with my monitor, but I don't think so.
 

DonS

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00FFDC
R = 00
G = FF
B = DC
(sounds like a pretty bright "cyan" to me, leaning a bit toward green)

It's unlikely that you'll ever get the PC monitor to match the scanner's LED, if using the same RGB values.
 
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