Hello,
This is my first time posting on these forums, so please let me know if there is a better place for me to post about this (I searched and couldn't find any posts about similar issues).
I work at a company with several Elation Show Designer 1s. They have been reliable, but we had ordered a new set of them a little while back that seem to have been from a different series of production, despite being the same unit type (Show Designer 1). I say this because our original units had blue backlit LED screens on them, while these ones have green backlit LED screens, so I don't know if there is something different about this version that I am not aware of.
The issue that we are having is with one of the units having completely frozen up on us. At first, it was unresponsive to commands and the text displayed on the screen seemed unaffected by any of the buttons pressed, etc. Upon turning it off and on again, the LED screen on the Show Designer 1 now just displayed black squares in all of the spots where text would normally appear, none of the Red indicator lights on the board were on, and even holding the menu and erase buttons doesn't seem to elicit any feedback.
I tried using the SD File Transfer application with the recommended Null Modem USB-RS232 cable from StarTech to upload the software version listed on the Show Designer 1 page, but after the upload process finished in the application, it didn't seem to have any effect on the unit itself. Tried turning off and on again, but still nothing but black squares on the screen. Is the unit just shorted out? We're gonna be back in major production season again soon enough and we really don't want to have to purchase a whole new unit, especially if there's a chance it will just brick on us too.
Any help or insight would be appreciated, and please ask for more information as needed!