Nikon P520 repair problem - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: krolu
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 02:52:04 pm
content: Hi, I have a problem with an attempted repair, and i want to ask you all for help.Story is:I recently bought my self a camera, it's a Nikon P520 and it was broken. I bought it because I wanted to try to repair it so don't write to send it back. I don't have big experience in camera electronics but still wanted a challenge. The initial problem was that it is not turning on, main board is taking a lot of power (like 130mA) when camera should be in off state and after couple of seconds there is a 0.5 second pause and the agin drains energy, the camera is dead all the time. After couple of hours of trying to reverse engineer some of it electronics I accidentally damaged one of the component and now the symptoms are that it is completely not responding like no current flows to the main board. I was holding the board with on a mount with alligator clips and one of the clip chopped of a piece of the component. I wanted to help with identifying what part that could have been that was damaged, it is visible in the photos of the board that I took. I know that it is difficult with no schematic and only this photos but maybe somebody will have some experience here and knows something about this board or something like that.

author: TiN
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 02:57:55 pm
content: QuoteYou are in for one, that's almost as hard as it goes, with most of parts customized, HDI board with laser vias which need mandatory microscope to work on, and zero service information and high-density package types.Often problem with these is smart battery. If camera was sitting on shelf for too long then battery get discharge too low, and charge circuit detect it as faulty battery and do not power on or start charge. External charger or fresh battery could show that there is no problem with camera itself. 130mA isn't much power for grunty electronics in these cameras either.But I guess you are already too deep into it, to figure this out now...

author: krolu
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 08:12:19 pm
content: Than look at this photo. What I did is I checked with continuity tester where battery plus is connected. Every yellow dot is point checked. Red one is where the connection with battery plus is.To be fair I didn't expected so much problem with parts identification. Most of them haven't got any labeling on them and even the ones that has some codes I could not find any info on the internet. I think the challenge has already been ended cause it's to hard but still I'm curious what I could find why it wasn't working and maybe reverse engineer it some more but now the problem with that damaged component is stopping me from further work. You said that 130mA is not much, but remember that it is turned off, nothing is showing on the display, the led indicating power is off and only battery connected (by battery I mean power supply set for 3.7V). That's why I think it was sent with completely dead battery, like 0V. When I tried to charge it it was drained completely before I was able to push the power button.

author: CrisElectronic
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 21, 2019, 10:48:26 pm
content: Quote from: krolu on January 19, 2018, 08:12:19 pmHi @kroluI alredy have the same problem with the Nikon p520 motherboard, 130mA in stand by mode. Did you find any solution for this problem?thanks a lot.

author: krolu
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2019, 09:46:36 am
content: Unfortunately no. I resigned from repairing it. What i found is that a lot of people has this problem with this particular photo camera. It's a common issue but hard to find as trying to search for solution gave me no such info and personally I also could not find any reason why it's behaving like that. It's too complicated.Sorry