Trigger/file kills Wav-trigger

Sensors Sound & Audio
1

Hi!
We are a non-profit model railway club which have been using Wav-trigger since 5 years and it works very well. We have 3 of them, working in different areas at the moment.

We have an issue that we do not understand why it occurs and when we solve it, we do not know what the root cause was.

So i try to give some background:

We activate different sounds with the Wav-trigger internal ground-triggering functionality. Some triggers are connected to physical buttons while others are connected to other micro processors however physically isolated with relay or opto coupler. (So the other micro processer activates a relay or OC and that creates a closure at the Wav-Trigger end.

We use external amps and power through barrell with 9 or 12 v. Different power sources for amp vs. the WT.

This setup works fine but occasionally we have hade issues with distrubing sounds. I do not think the issue is related to trigger functionality.

All mixdowns are made in Auda City. SD card are FAT 32. San Disk 8-16 GB.

We run the player max. 8 hours per day during 36 days. We shut of power every day.

First issue
For example we have one wav-file that is a mixdown from AudaCity with multiple tracks. That is how most of our sounds are. The project file was correct according to requirements. What happened then was that everything worked from the beginning. Within a undefined period of time the sound track did play but some individual tracks in the mix down sounded like gibberish/deformed. It started suddenly.

I see that even tough the mix down is 1411 kbit/s (44.1 kHz), stereo and 16 bit individual tracks in the mix down has a rate of 48 or 96 kHz etcetera.

Could that be the root cause?

We solved this by loading the wav-file onto the SD-card again. It will work until further…

Issue 2
A similiar issue is this:
We have another Wav-trigger. Same setup as described above.

One trigger sometimes kills the board. Of course a ground issue then creates a disturbing sound in the speakers. But why does it kill the board?

I did today the same as above. I replaced the mix down on the SD card with the one I have in my computer. Now it works. It is almost as the file gets corrupted.

This mixdown only has 1 track and it is 44.1. This player has also multiple tracks, but they never creates issues. And in those mix downs all tracks are 44.1!. Strange isn’t it?

Project files
Here are a video showing Issue 2, some pictures of the version of board.
(When you hear the chicken sound, that is the track triggered that shuts down the board) https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ma1d0jxyjuephk4sehegy/AJp7oR3saeve8vJ4OofRY3c?rlkey=qbqs033bl9x00hhdkd8gvvygg&dl=0

What to do?

I have read lots of topics here, and user guides and other communitys but I have not found anyone with those particular issues.

I look forward to your ideas.
If needed I can send project files and mix downs.

Best Regards Johan from Sweden

2

Wow - a lot to unpack here. Some questions:

You imply that you’ve had three WAV Triggers running for 5 years. Have you always had these problems, or did they start recently?

Have you tried using a new microSD card? Consumer grade cards do go bad. When you replace files on a card, they likely end up on different sectors which can start out good but then fail when the card starts having issues. Best to swap out with a whole new card.

It’s important to try and determine whether the problems follow the microSD card or are specific to the WAV Trigger itself. The vast majority of issues can be traced to the microSD card.

1 Like
3

Hi, and thank you for help!

I will structure my “brief” and lacking english :slight_smile:
Also I was a bit unclear and have now checked the information better:

Wav-Trigger 1
Multiple files with sound running with standard trigger (ground).
Max 2 file playing simultaneously.
Since 2021.

One trigger sometimes kills the board. Of course a ground issue then creates a disturbing sound in the speakers.

Reloading the track to the same SD-card makes the trigger and track works again. So I will have to keep an eye on this.

Wav-Trigger 2
Multiple files with sound running with standard trigger (ground).
Max 1 file playing simultaneously.
Since 2023.
This is where 1 track is has an issue. It contains multiple audios in the mixdown and 1-2 audios start to sound strange.
A sound that normally is a “car engine” starts to just sound “ritsch, ritsch, ritsch”. And you can hear that it is a specifik audio file in the mixdown because it plays (sounds) with the same intervall as the actual sound would do.

I notice that I did some changes on audio tracks summer/autumn 2024 - I bet I did change som audio file rates in the mix. I can not remeber that the bad sounds has occured since then.

I will keep an eye on this. No issues so far.

Wav-Trigger 3
Multiple files with sound running with standard trigger (ground) and also some tracks random. Max 2 files playing simultaneously.
One 1 year old.
No issues so far.

This is the most strange one as it kills the board. However there is no issue restarting the board. One might think that it is a spike from long trigger cables, but even with a short trigger cable connected directly to the inputs the issue occured until I reloaded the audio track.

Cards
I will check exactly which cards we use.
I will reply with that information. The resolution has been to reload tracks on the SD-cards, except the changes I did to WT-2 mixdown

I will also, when any issue occurs, try swapping cards and see (listen!) to if the issues are following the card. I hope so :slight_smile:

4

Also maybe share some photos of the soldering connections

5

Hey!

For simplicity here is a link to my Dropbox where I have created 3 folders corresponding to the numbers above. There are photos of connections sand SD-cards.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ma1d0jxyjuephk4sehegy/AJp7oR3saeve8vJ4OofRY3c?rlkey=qbqs033bl9x00hhdkd8gvvygg&dl=0

Nota bene!
Number 3 is working and never had any issues.
No. 1 and 2 have had issues as described above but are now working after reloading SD-cards.

Best regards, Johan

6

Hi!
I guess this is “industrial” SD cards that you can recommend: 8GB 2D NAND Industrial microSD Card | Sandisk

https://www.mouser.se/ProductDetail/SanDisk/SDSDQED-008G-XI?qs=gZXFycFWdAPa9LVRVbu4nw%3D%3D&mgh=1&utm_id=20706020061&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_marketing_tactic=emeacorp&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADn_wf2sTwC3oBGdeEr361MCXkfcn&gclid=CjwKCAjwq7fABhB2EiwAwk-YbFrWY4dsymmTrVZYuRBMweJcYHJUjZJqCCUkuJM-YCFZUIihbxFvzBoC8wEQAvD_BwE

7

That looks good - I’ve also had good luck with sandisk sdxc cards and kingston’s go! cards

8

Thanks, yes we are quite skilled in soldering and connections, cabling :slight_smile: Thanks for info regarding SD cards. I will watch and see (listen) to what is happeningen. Just waiting for the issues to return!

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