PropStick USB Brown-out Symptoms

kaliatech

My question is whether or not an insufficient power supply can cause lockups, or other erratic behavior, without triggering the brown-out detection on a PropStick USB?


EDIT:
The rest of this post was just details specific to my project. Since the original post, I've found that my problem is probably not power related. At least not directly. It Instead it seems strongly related to how fast I send data over the serial connection, so I need to debug down that path more. However, my original question regarding PropStick USB brown-out symptoms still stands. Asked another way, is the hardwired brown-out detection, with subsequent reset, on the PropStick USB a fool-proof method for detecting lower power issues? Or, are there potential border-line cases that would cause erratic behavior/lock-ups instead of resetting?

cavelamb

First off, how much "overhead" does your power supply have?

By that I mean Amperage.

Servos can pull quite a bit of current (up to 1 amp each?)
If you have several moving at once they could be overloading the power supply?

kaliatech

That is definitely possible. My real question though, is that if this is the case (that my power supply is not adequate), shouldn't the propellor behavior be consistent? i.e. Shouldn't it consistently reset instead of lock-up? Similarly, if that was the case, I would expect I could consistently replicate it by increasing the servo load (by causing them to stall, etc).

I think the crux of my question is whether or not the BOEn -> RESn on PropStickUSB is a fool-proof method for detecting power issues.