OP-1 Dead, help!

Prepare yourselves for a downward spiral into depression with this thrilling story.

If anyone browses this subreddit often, I previously had the problem of my keys retriggering when pressed on a used OP-1, so it would play a drum hit twice is a quick succession and skip octaves. Here is that post if you also want to read that.

After noticing that the keyboard replacement part was on sale, I decided it would be a good idea to open it up and re-seat the connector wire to the keyboard, just to check if that was the problem before spending £80 on a new keyboard part. I used this guide: here.

Ohh it went downhill from there. After putting it back together and making sure that everything was seated properly, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all, the worst thing I thought that could happen was that the keyboard retriggering problem would remain (and it did, of course).

I booted it up aand a white flash came up and covered the entire screen for a split second before turning completely black. The unit still made sounds from the keyboard and it was still recognized by my computer when plugged in. “Well, shit. It can’t get any worse than this.”

Some keys didn’t work so I opened it back up and made sure that the keyboard connector was in snug. I turned it on again to make sure, and finally, all of the keys were working, but the screen still wasn’t. This only happened twice, but the screen would come on perfectly fine except for the fact that all black parts of the screen were white. I managed to record it by accident and I thought I was finally getting somewhere (I wasn’t). Here’s the video of it happening.

Then after turning it on and off hoping that it would fix itself, it got worse. Now it isn’t even booting into the OS, it isn’t making any more sounds and it isn’t even taking a charge or getting picked up by my computer anymore. It’s completely dead - except it still flashes red for a split second (almost) every time I boot it up and the speaker clicks whenever plugged in via USB or turned on. This is where I’m at now.

I’m currently going through Teenage Engineering’s support page on what to do with no success so far and I’ve tried looking for people with similar problems with no success.

I don’t know what caused this, all I did was disconnect and then reconnect the keyboard? I really hope I haven’t got an expensive paperweight. I’ve already spent a couple of hours crying over this before coming here. I have no idea what to do other than to keep trying the steps on the TE support page, selling it for parts or repair or sending it over to TE to look at and end up spending probably £400 overall getting it fully repaired.

**TL;DR Used OP-1 (I’ve had it for over 2 months) is completely dead after reconnecting the keyboard - it only flashes a white/red on the screen and the speaker pops and after that, nothing. No sound, no charge, nada. It’s currently charging whilst off.
**

i would send it in to TE myself as its worth a lot more working than dead

@RustD0GGY I feel your pain! What steps have you tried so far? Have you reinstalled the firmware? I’d definitely also recommend sending an email to TE support and explaining your situation exactly as above.

@5StarNomad
I’ve tried booting into the ‘TE Menu’ which is where the firmware and factory reset functions are, but there isn’t anything there (as the screen is obviously blank). I don’t think I can reinstall the firmware as the device doesn’t get picked up my computer. I’ve tried all of the steps over here to no avail.

I’ve already sent over an email to TE with my plea for help, I’ll do just about anything to get my baby back, hah! Thanks for the help nonetheless, I feel a lot better after pondering over a day - I must’ve gone through all seven stages of grief!

@RustD0GGY mate, I feel your pain. My first Obi-Wan which I bought brand new had a big issue with the screen becoming filled with weird pixels everywhere… Kinda looked cool in a weird way, but also let the screen wouldn’t work at all. Problem was intermittent it came and went, and seems to be linked to diminishing battery life. At some point it started working again and did so for several months, before the problem came back again and this time I couldn’t get rid of it.

Since then I very very very luckily found a second hand op1 for sale in my area, as soon as I spotted it I bombarded the guy with calls and texts, managed to go and pick it up for 650 Australian dollars. As far as I know this is the cheapest I’ve ever seen good condition everyone going for. My original Obi-Wan is still all busted up, I was thinking of selling it, but because I have such a fondness for the machine, and now have decided to probably just hold on to it, in the event that my working op1 malfunctions, I will have some spare parts of my sleeve.

I’m sorry I don’t have any really useful advice for you, unfortunately, I thought I’d just share my story as I can really relate, and Sammy I was hard times when I sleep contrasted with finding a cheap second hand unit. I had that malfunctioning op1 for about a year, and I would use it all the time and then sometimes only get a few minutes the function out of it before the screen would so come to the pixels of death. I would then need to charge it for 12 hours or more to possibly and a stress the word only “possibly” because sometimes the pixel screen would be there at full charge comma and I would need to leave it on for a whole nother day playing a sequence through the internal speaker inside a case so didn’t drive me crazy to get maybe an hour or two of function out of it again… Funnily enough, it’s not that much less frustrating than using Ableton with all of its own foibles, haha

Without knowing what signals go over the keyboard cable by not seating it properly on your first attempt you could’ve shorted something out. Usually on keyboards this will not damage the motherboard but to be fair this is a unique device so I’m unsure if its fair to compare it to a laptop keyboard.

Another option is that you damaged the device due to ESD, which is the more likely option. Between your body and the OP-1 there can be thousands of volts (Although with a very low amount of energy overal) which will damage the components if you make contact with any of them.
An example of ESD is when you touch someone else and you get a little shock, however when you actually feel it you’re already way up the 15kV+ area. Damaging a device like the OP-1 can already happen at just a few kV and you will not feel it when this happens.
Components usually have some internal protection for ESD, but if your OP-1 was already starting to show failure this could’ve been fatal.

Anyways sorry for the boring lecture!

To be sure, have you already tried booting up your OP-1 without the keyboard connected at all?