Hello there,
I started having issues with my E1 mk1 yesterday. It started with the unit not updating presets sent to device. I then try to reboot the unit several times, until I reloaded the firmware as instructed in the documentation (middle button, etc). The unit was still not responsive to presets updates, at times not seen by the pc (windows 11). I turned everything off and today, the unit displayed the garbled fonts upon restarting. From there, none of the troubleshooting is helping (I’m not getting the splash screen when holding the middle button after plugin back, it goes directly to the preset). I’m not able to go into disk mode either. That being said, presets updates work. So I’m not sure what to do from here…?
I need to add that I uploaded by mistake the Tempera preset that has a warning to only use with MK2 (I saw the warning after), which seems to have started many issues.
Check if the power supply provides enough current by swapping the power for a powerful USB power supply (without intermediate USB hub) for instance for testing purposes and see if it gives you the same result. This to exlude battery or power issues.
the broken fonts indicate that the font file cannot be read. It might be caused corrupted file system on the internal SD card.
Please follow these steps:
- start the unit with middle-left button pressed. I know that you have done it already, but repeat it.
- once the unit boots up, disconnect and reconnect the cable. It should start up without the progress bar animation and the fonts will still be broken.
- do not do anything else than going to Electra One App
- make sure you pick CTRL port in the list of MIDI ports (or MIDI2 on windows) and hit the Recover button
- once the page says: recovery completed. disconnect and reconnect the cable.
If everything went ok and the SD card is not dead, it should work.
If you still get broken fonts you might want to repeat the process but download the recovery file from the factoryReset page and upload it using SysEx Librarian, MidiOx or some other tool.
If even that does not help, the card is not most likely ok. PM me in such case. I can guide you through the process of replacing it or we can arrange servicing.
If the recovery fixes the issue but you experience it again in near future, the SD card is probably going to die soon.
I have midi ox and the img file…how do I upload such a non .syx file?
Hi @martin
I do recall issues when power supply is insufficient. How do these manifest then? In other words, how can we recognize if the issue would come from the card or from USB power?
not the .img file. There is a link on the factoryReset page:
Download that file and upload it to E1 with the MidiOx. Note, the upload of the file should be the first and only activity you do after you boot your controller up.
Let me know if it helped.
Distorted font, graphics, etc. usually means broken files on the SD card or faulty SD card. Electra loads lots of data to its RAM at the start up. The animated progress bar on the start up screen indicates status of that process. Part of the data are fonts and bitmap fragments that are used to assemble graphics you see on the screen. If these are missing, broken, or cannot be read, E1 will still boot up, but you will see distorted graphics.
https://docs.electra.one/troubleshooting/brokenfonts.html
The insufficient power mostly affects the touch sensor chips. I mean they are the most sensitive to the voltage drop. When the voltage bends down you will see erratic fantom touches even when you are not touching the screen or knobs. If the voltage gets even lower the display might stay fully white or the controller will keep rebooting.
Thanks, understood.
Occasionally it happens on my Mk2 the screen seems to ‘shift’ As if it no longer knows where coordinate 0,0 is. This doesn’t affect the useability, but as long as you don’t refresh pages then, there might be some ugly graphical remnants here and there.what would cause that?
Alright so it did help. I was able to go back to readable text. However, I feel it’s not as clear as it used to be. There’s “noise” between letters…
This means that the font file was loaded correctly at least once and then either removed or got broken again. I assume that it eventually became completely unreadable.
Note, you should not start the controller with the left-middle button pressed after you uploaded the .syx file. If you did, repeat the procedure. If not, the card is broken. Contact me on the PM in that case. Thx.
I didn’t press anything upon booting up. And thus far, the text remains as is in the picture. Prior to repeating the procedure, it was indeed completely unreadable. In the end, I think the card is defective. I’ll PM you.