Survey - What's Your Prop Temperature? Cold, Warm or Hot?
Humanoido
Posts: 5,770
This is a survey to learn about the Prop chip's running temperature.
You can reply here. The choice is cold, warm or hot.
Please mention details. Ok, I will begin.
Cold (68 deg.) 40-pin dip chip
Using internal RC Clock, 12MHz
3-Volt battery, LED drawing 9 mA
1-Cog SPIN program to loop LED port on/off @ 1 Hz
Room temperature (68 deg.)
No fan, breadboard open to the air
humanoido
Post Edited (humanoido) : 12/3/2009 12:28:46 AM GMT
You can reply here. The choice is cold, warm or hot.
Please mention details. Ok, I will begin.
Cold (68 deg.) 40-pin dip chip
Using internal RC Clock, 12MHz
3-Volt battery, LED drawing 9 mA
1-Cog SPIN program to loop LED port on/off @ 1 Hz
Room temperature (68 deg.)
No fan, breadboard open to the air
humanoido
Post Edited (humanoido) : 12/3/2009 12:28:46 AM GMT
Comments
Temperature is relative. For anything meaningful you need hard data. Chip temperature, board temperature, ambient temperature, any air movement?
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If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.
I did have one get quite hot a few days ago when I put over 9V across it.
Leon
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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
How did you obtain your temperature measurements?
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If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.
I have had demoboard chips (being very teeny in their SMT packages) get detectably warm just running TV_text and some serial cogs, but I've never felt a P8X32A get "hot" no matter what I did to it. Maximum power usage with all cogs going should be around 200 mA, less than 1 watt at 3v3. Having all I/O's maxxed doesn't raise this much because the max total current is only over the voltage drop of the output transistors, just a fraction of a volt. This is a level considered safe for plastic transistors like the 2N2222, which are about the same physical size as the SMT props.
Of course, if you're overclocking or drawing 2 amps total from all the I/O's, all bets are off. But I'd say if your prop isn't comfortable to touch, you're probably doing something to it you shouldn't be doing.
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www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Couldn't you fix that with a "low drop out regulator"?
While this is part qualitative approach to temperature determination, it works quite well and has an differential detection accuracy of within 10 degrees. The margin of error of 10 degrees is certainly small enough to determine the approximate comparison between cold, even, warm and hot.
If I want a more exact temperature determination in the future, when the component is significantly warmer or colder than its surroundings, I will use a Penguin Robot with an infrared heat thermometer (Parallax MLX90614 Infrared Thermometer Module with 10° FOV) directionally focused on the chip and simply read out the temperature on the computer screen.
www.parallax.com/Store/Robots/WalkingRobots/tabid/129/CategoryID/21/List/0/SortField/0/Level/a/ProductID/438/Default.aspx
www.parallax.com/Store/Sensors/TemperatureHumidity/tabid/174/CategoryID/49/List/0/Level/a/ProductID/539/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2cProductName
humanoido