Help! Something's wrong with my Promethean board and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. A week or two ago I couldn't get the projector to work and a fellow PTer had a quick fix. Yea! Now, everything seems to work fine (from computer or doc. camera) BUT the pen doesn't seem to be communicating at all. I thought my pen suddenly didn't work, but when I tried my colleague's pen, it didn't work either. There's clearly some sort of missed connection, but I can't figure out what. It looks to me like everything is properly hooked up, but I know I must be missing something. Anybody have any ideas??? My kids now expect to use to this as part of our daily learning. "I like it when we do it with the pennnnnn...."
"Me, too!" I replied. If this doesn't work, I'll try Promethean Planet or calling the installation folks, but I bet it's something little that I'm just overlooking. Can anyone help?
Last edited by GdHrtdTchr; 04-24-2010 at 03:35 AM..
Reason: grammar oops
There are several possible fixes from turning on/off the Promethean to installing updated drivers. My suggestion is to google "promethean pen not working." You'd be surprised how many suggestions there are out there. You might have to sift through them. Mine started working again after I recalibrated the board.
Is your board new? If it has the little flame in the upper left corner, hold the pen up to it and recalibrate. Check to see if the usb cord is fully plugged in behind the board. Mine had been pulled halfway out accidently, and it caused the pen to stop working.
I have had to unplug mine from the wall, wait a few seconds and plug in again. The Promethean tech people said that this can happen when your computer is set to hibernate after a certain amount of time. They said that if you change power settings to never go off then the pens won't "forget" what they are supposed to do.
This has happened to me too. Once I had to unplug from the USB port and replug it in and it helped.
Be sure the flame in the upper right corner is lit. Unplugging from USB port helped that.
Now, the weird fix that has worked several times is this: GENTLY pull the pen tip out of the pen (it is 3 or so inches long.) Gently tap the upside down hollow pen a few times. Replace the pen tip. Don't know why it works unless it gets dust out or something.
Thank you! I had tried to calibrate it, but couldn't, because it just wasn't responsive at all. Anyway, I unplugged it over the weekend, then we couldn't find the pen, THEN one of my students found it way behind the board. Well, fished it out and tapped it and TA-DAH!!!
It works, now! Amen!!! I'll keep all the ideas in case it ever happens again.
Hmmmmmm....
Same thing today. It works. Then it doesn't work. Well, THIS time I noticed that the calibration was off. At first I was able to calibrate it, which I THOUGHT went well, but then when I thought I'd be all set, it was completely unresponsive. No indication of sensing the pen whatsoever. I've got two guesses. When I calibrated, the prompt came to the upper left then lower right. Usually, it goes to the upper right afterwards. So, maybe I double clicked and then counted as the upper right calibration and then although the others were fine everything was completely out of whack?????? Or, could it be that when I leaned on the board to calibrate (I'm VERY short) that I loosened a sensor??????
I'm just going to try unplugging it for a while again. I'm not sure that's going to be a fix, but I did it last time and then in later magically worked.
This is getting frustrating!!! But I don't want to complain because I'm so happy to have a board at all.
I would suggest that you contact Promethean Tech support on 0844 855 2201 - They will diagnose while you are at the board. The usual cause, for the problem you explain, is the USB cable being fed through connection plates and having a combined length of over 5m.
04-23-2010, 01:16 PM
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