Troubleshooting a scoreboard

[aftershock]

I had a call yesterday where the horn on a scoreboard in the school gym would sound off at random. The maint. guy at the school thought it might be a loose connection in the RCA jack. After a few hours of testing this and checking that, the only conclusion I could come up with was that there was some sort of voltage or voltage leak in the ground going through the conduit that the bell wire was run in. I dont know if this will be a permanent fix but I isolated a new run of bell wire into a plastic box and it seemed to have stopped the random horn. Anyone else ran across this type of problem before?

 

[kwired]

My first thought after reading the title of your post was that your favorite team needs to play better:grin:

As far as your fix it sounds like a grounded conductor or one that is unintentionally grounded someplace is the one that is controlled for the horn.

 

[grich]

I think you're on the right track with the inadvertent ground idea. Been a while, but I seem to remember some scoreboard's horns barking whenever there was data loss.

Haven't seen a scoreboard using RCA plugs for control...what brand is it? Most of what I've worked with uses 1/4" TRS phone plugs and shielded/twisted pair cable, or BNC connectors and RG-58 cable.

My very first practice with a soldering iron 35 years ago was fixing a broken wire on a scoreboard control with a 12-pin Jones plug...oh what fun!