auto-leveling IR and ambient light

As mentioned in previous posts the LED lights on my unit are currently dimmed.They are functional in that they emit light but it is so faint they may as well not be on at all. I was quite frustrated yesterday when I canceled a print 8 hrs in thinking it had lifted off the bed only to find it hadn't (no visibility).

Anyways, I bring this up for the following reason:

I have recently noticed my extruder seems to crash into my print quite frequently. I don't think its a z-offset issue. I have fixed it in the interim somewhat by turning off combing and cranking up the z-hop.

Two questions:

1.) I noticed on GitHub that there was a release at some point that mentioned improved auto bed leveling and something about correcting for ambient lighting. If so, could the fact that my LED's are dimmed be throwing this off?

2.) Does the IR light feed off the same power supply as the led lights? I'm wondering if it could be dimmed as well and throwing off the auto leveling.

Or maybe there's something else I'm not accounting for?

 

@mark tomlinson Diagnostically do you have any idea why they would have just randomly started dimming like that? Its not the mainboard itself because I just replaced it and the problem continues. Could it be some type of file corruption? The fact that it is symmetrically happening to both led panels (along with the fact that the lights still work--just barely light) and that the right LED panel plugs directly into the mainboard leads me to believe it is not likely an issue with the lights themselves or the power supply. Thinking in terms of Ohm's law I would guess that somehow the circuit resistance has gone up. Or if they are controlled intelligently (i.e. by a processor) is it something that flashing the firmware or OS might fix?

 

@WheresWaldo @mark tomlinson I'm actually on a plane out of the country atm and don't have my unit with me.Are you familiar with the internal wiring of the R2? The right LED is connected directly into a 5V terminal on the mainboard. I'm wondering where it goes from there. I know that the left LED is getting the same wattage as the first because they are equally bright, but that's not enough to tell if they are in series or parallel. If I was more familiar with the wiring structure of the unit I could likely narrow down the problem quite quickly. Do you know if these specs are linked somewhere?

 

@mark tomlinson @WheresWaldo Perfect! I have a voltmeter/ammeter/ohmeter as well which should help narrow down where the problems coming from as well.

I want to thank both of you for your genuine willingness to help me not only in this question but in the multiple I've had since receiving this device. It was a Christmas gift so in general I have had no idea what I'm doing most of the time. Your answers have likely saved me several hours of trouble. @Geof as well.