Menu Button Not Working on Ice Tube Clock Kit

[jbaudio1950]

I am new to message forums and posting messages, so please forgive me if I am not doing this correctly.

I just completed the Ice Tube Clock kit. All progress tests passed, but when I power up the clock it displays the time flashing on and off every 2 seconds. Pressing the MENU button has not effect at all. Pressing the SET button displays a day of the week and a date (both incorrect). Pressing the + button also has no effect.

I have triple checked my solder joints and all appear fine. I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thank you,

JB Audio

[adafruit_support_bill]

If you post clear photos of the front & back of the board we'll take a look too.

[jbaudio1950]

Attached are pictures of the front and back of my completed board.

Thank you for offering to take a look. I'm stumped!

JB Audio

[jbaudio1950]

Trying again.

[adafruit_support_rick]

The assembly looks OK. Must be a soldering problem. I've pointed out a few suspicious-looking solders below, along with what looks like a stray chunk of metallic crud.

icetube.png (1.43 MiB) Viewed 1850 times

[jbaudio1950]

Thank you for taking the time to review my board. As it turns out, it wasn't my soldering but you did point me in the right direction. You correctly saw that the solder joint on the number 4 pin (from the far end) looked different. When I checked it I could not find any pin to solder to. I wicked the joint and sure enough there was no pin. I next checked the continuity between that pin on the chip and the solder joint. Sure enough it was an open. I removed the chip and looking into the socket I could see that the socket pin was bent over and inside the socket. Took some doing but I un-soldered the socket enough to pull out that pin. I straightened it out and pushed it back in. Once everything was re-soldered, I plugged in the power and sure enough the MENU button worked! Turns out the clock will run with that pin on the chip disconnected. The MENU button will just not work.

This was a stupid thing on my part for not checking all of the pins on the socket before inserting it on the board. If I had just looked into the socket before soldering it down I would have seen the bent pin and saved myself all this headache. Good lesson to me for the next project.

Again, thank you so much for your time and assistance. Much appreciated!

JB Audio

[adafruit_support_rick]

Cool! Good find
I've bent IC pins while shoving them into sockets, but I've never had a bent socket. Weird.