Possibly dead board?

hextic

I recently received a Propeller proto board for Christmas. At first it worked fine, and then for some bizarre reason only one IO pin would work at a time (Example: turning on one pin would turn on all the output pins), and then the board stopped being recognized by Propeller tool at all. What recourse do I have? I think I got a bad board, but there are items soldered onto the board so I'm not sure how this all works. (RMA, not the board. xP)

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Is is possible that you have a short?

Power shorts usually cause issues with the Propeller Tool seeing it.
(Is the LED lit?)

Could you have tied the I/O together somewhere?

If you've got a camera handy, post a couple pics and let the experts
have a look. (the real EE's here. [noparse]:)[/noparse] It might be a simple circuit issue.

OBC

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Philldapill

How about some code as well? You may be turning on ALL the pins in your code for some reason as well. If you have two pins linked somehow, this could also cause a short, or problems at least.

hextic

CON
  _clkmode = xtal1 + pll16x
  _xinfreq = 5_000_000
  camera_power = 8
  camera_ready = 5
  camera_shoot = 23       
PUB LedOnOff
  term.start(31,30)
  term.str(string("Entering...",13))
  CameraOn
  ShootPic
  CameraOff                        
PUB CameraOn
  dira[noparse][[/noparse]camera_power] := 1
  term.str(string("Turning off...",13))
  CameraOff'Turn camera off, just in case.
  term.str(string("Done.",13))
  waitcnt(clkfreq*2+cnt)'Wait a moment.
  term.str(string("Turning on...",13))
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_power] :=1
  waitcnt(clkfreq+cnt)'Turn camera on.
  term.str(string("Done.",13))
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_power] := 0
PUB CameraOff
  term.str(string("In routine...",13))
  dira[noparse][[/noparse]camera_power] := 1
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_power] := 1
  waitcnt(clkfreq/4+cnt)
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_power] := 0
  term.str(string("Done.",13))
PUB ShootPic
  dira[noparse][[/noparse]camera_ready] := 1
  dira[noparse][[/noparse]camera_shoot] := 1
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_ready] := 1
  waitcnt(clkfreq+cnt)'Wait a moment for F-setting to be obtained.
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_shoot] := 1
  waitcnt(clkfreq/4+cnt)'Pause a brief moment to ensure camera obtained signal.
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_shoot] := 0
  outa[noparse][[/noparse]camera_ready] := 0
  waitcnt(clkfreq*10+cnt)'Wait for picture to be taken before returning.
  dira[noparse][[/noparse]camera_ready] := 0
  dira[noparse][[/noparse]camera_ready] := 0

Yes, the green LED turns on fine. Uploading some images, of the top and bottom of the board.

Post Edited (hextic) : 12/27/2008 7:34:46 AM GMT

hextic

hextic

Those blue things soldered on are just screw-down wire clamps so I don't have to permanently solder individual wires to the board. Even with each wire in a different unit, for some bizarre reason, well, let me first explain how this is set up. Right now, I am trying to get my board to control a camera. The wires for the camera for each button are confusing, so I have a box full of transistors that simplifies the interface. A common ground, a wire which will press the power button (hold to turn on, any current will turn off an on camera), a wire which will half-depress the picture button (camera gets ready and focuses), and a wire which will fully depress the picture button. In testing, no matter what pin assignment I used, the camera would turn on fine, take a picture, and then when it came time to turn off, it would take another picture. And then it stopped being recognized by Propeller tool at all.

StefanL38

Hello hextic,

your code runs down ONE time and then it's finished.

As the board is not working properly. I recommend to do very basic tests.

1.) Measuring the current flowing through the board.

2.) DISconnect everything from the camera.
Connect a 220 ohm-resistors to an IO-PIN and an LED to the resistor and ground.
Load a small program that let this IO-PIN blink.


The pictures are not sharp enough to see in detail how the soldering is done.
As far as I can see it. The solderplum is formed like a ball. This happens when
the solderingtime is too short. You should keep the solderiron in good contact
to the PCB AND the wire until the solderplum flows down and forms a
"cone". But still as short as possible until this happends. 2-3 seconds.

if you need more help just post again here

best regards

Stefan