Smart Board will not orient!

[fishing_geek]

Hi All
I have a number of smart boards that simply will not orient! I have selected the advance 20 point orient but will no joy still about 5 inch's away.
Any one give me a clue what I missing.

Fishing Geek

[localzuk]

There's a few things that can cause this:-

Interference from electrical wiring behind the board (I've had this happen in my last school).
Blunt force having damaged the surface of the board
Broken controller unit
Just wear and tear on the surface.

You can try to do an 80 point orientation per - Setting the Orientation Precision and see if it makes any difference.

If not, I'd recommend getting them fixed by Smart.

[laserblazer]

Is this a consistent error across the board? Often, they go out at the edges. There are all sorts of suggestions why this happens, electrical interference is a favourite. If the errors are consistent, something you could try is to calibrate using a whiteboard marker, so it leaves a visible mark on the board. Then use the iwb pen and hit each of the marks you have made and make another ink mark. Then go back to orient compensating for the error. Eg. if the second mark is 5cm away at 2-o-clock, then orient 5cm at 8-o-clock from the orient point. This sounds a bit of a hassle but might get the boards working until you can find what the problem is.

I have to say that 5" seems to be quite a large error. The ones I have seen are usually a cm or two. If a similar problem is occuring on several boards, then that is strange.

[fishing_geek]

Thank's for reply's
I have two boards doing the same thing I give it a go and see what happens

Fishing Geek

[mikkydoos]

Tried updating the firmware.

I've seen that if the board is bolted too tightly to it mounting bracket (bottom of the board, under the pen tray) it bends the board slightly causing it to misalign.

[ricki]

HI

I am scatter gun trying here so I appologies.

Is there a usb extender on the board? If so try plugging it in into the boards wire to see if its the extender having problems.

Have you tried a machine that works with the smartboard thats from another room? You can identify if its the machine or the board.

Have you updated the notebook software/ driver and the firmware of the board. If not that might be a place to start.

Is there something sticking in the back of the board?

Is there damage to the surface of the board?

On the back of the board is a box I think its called a controller. Try one from another working board of the same type that works. I have never seen one go but I have heard rumours they do break.

I hope this helps.

Richard

I

[silver_uk]

Try swapping the controller board with a known working part. At least it might narrow down your problems.
Good luck :-)

[TommyCooper]

There's a huge number of possible causes of 600-series boards that won't orientate correctly. A few of the most common are:

- On Windows machines if the user doesn't have sufficient priviledges for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SMART Technologies\SMART Board Drivers part of the registry it won't orientate correctly. This is where the board orientation data is stored and the user will need to be able to create and modify subkeys and their contents within this key.

- If boards are exposed to high temperatures for extended periods of time the tension of the front surface can become uneven - the tell-tale sign of this is that lines drawn along the edges of the board appear broken or wobbly. They are only designed to work up to 35C - mounting them above radiators or next to hot water pipes can cause this type of failure. (This would not be covered by warranty as the boards would have been installed incorrectly).

- The controller module could be failing. As silver_uk says try swapping with another one that's working properly to prove this quickly.

If none of these work arm youself with the serial numbers of the boards and try giving Steljes (SMART's UK distributor) a call. Their technical guys are on 08450 724999.

Sorry to dispell a popular myth: but smart boards aren't affected by interference from electrical wiring behind the board, although they can suffer from earth loops and should have the bottom two fixing screws isolated from the fixing holes on the board. Promethean boards however can suffer due to electrical wiring behind the board as they're electromagnetic in design.

Good luck!