Massage chair board - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: Eversr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 24, 2017, 07:28:40 am
content: Hi I was wondering if anyone could help with a board from a massage chair. I am fairly new to electronics, I just started to get the hang of micro soldering on cell phone boards when we decided to build a house. All my gear has been in storage for a year and about to set everything up again. We found a deal on a very expensive massage chair I got for 1/4 of the price. Salesman said the only thing wrong with it was Remote. I thought I would try to fix it, so I bought it. With me still being busy trying to finish the house and wife wanting to use chair, I called the manufacturer and they had me hold a few buttons down on remote and no error codes or beeps came up so they said try a remote. I ordered one and the new remote does same thing as old one. So here is what is happening. Remote lcd is blank, the only buttons work on it seem to be the ones that manually adjust the chair and one button that turns led lights on. None of the automatic modes work. I will attach some photos of the remote and the main board in the chair. I don't know how to find to many problems with out schematics. If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.In the one photo I circled where the remote wires plug into the board.

author: Armadillo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2017, 11:01:44 am
content: There are only 4 wires, Red and Black should measure around 3.3 to 5v.Near the board there are 2 resistors near the connector for the other 2 wire, measure the ohms [power off].The 4 wires lead to micro-controller, trace those to it and check for any broken resistor along the way.

author: Eversr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 26, 2017, 10:36:24 pm
content: So I measured everything and wrote everything down to post my findings. And then I called the manufacturer again and they had me hold a couple buttons down again and this time I got an error code and it said the backrest of chair was faulty. So they were supposed to get back to me on a quote. Meanwhile I took the backrest apart and when I was about to give up, cause there were lots of pcb's in there I saw a wire unplugged from one of the motors. I plugged it in and it all worked. Sorry to have wasted anyone's time. Thanks for the help given. If there would have been something on one of the boards bad, wouldn't you almost have to have the schematics to fix it? And is there a place to find them that I don't know about??

author: eKretz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2017, 07:55:13 pm
content: Nah you don't always need schematics, but it can take a considerably longer time without them for certain repairs. It's a lot easier to follow circuit paths when they're laid out for you on paper, especially on multilayer boards.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2017, 08:09:11 pm
content: Schematics have been a rare luxury for quite a few years now. When I first started working on TVs and stuff there was often a schematic tucked inside the set but those days are long gone. Even service manuals rarely have schematics anymore when it comes to consumer gear. The techs just swap out whole boards or throw the whole unit away and replace it. Reverse engineering schematics is a valuable skill, you don't usually need to draw the whole circuit, just the areas you 're looking at.