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Problem with Servo — Parallax Forums

Problem with Servo

jimblob21jimblob21 Posts: 3
edited 2012-10-07 13:30 in General Discussion
My problem is that when I switch my Board of Education on/off switch to No:2 and click "Identify" it recognizes it no problem, but if I connect the Servo to it and click "Identify" it doesn;t recognize it. Is there a problem with the Servo or the Board of Education?

Comments

  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2012-10-06 03:08
    What sort of power supply are you using? What position is the servo jumper set to?

    A common problem is nearly dead batteries which when the servo is switched on cause the BS2 to get stuck in reset.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2012-10-06 03:32
    Servos are rather power hungry. And if all this is running on an old 9V battery, you easily get bad results. 9V batteries are handy, but they don't deliver much over time. Cheap ones are even worse at 700ma/hours or less.

    The Homework Board alone has a very low power requirement, about 25ma.
  • jimblob21jimblob21 Posts: 3
    edited 2012-10-07 04:11
    Yeah it seems it was the battery at fault. Thanks for all your help guys. Much appreciated.
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2012-10-07 06:08
    Glad to hear it. My Circuits and Electronics I professor gave a quiz where he outlined a circuit that wasn't working, and we had to explain what our first debugging step would be. The correct answer was check the power supply.
  • jimblob21jimblob21 Posts: 3
    edited 2012-10-07 08:54
    Lol yeah when i worked for a local computer company and someone brought in a computer we always checked the power supply first and most times it was that. You'd think, therefore, that I would have thought of that wouldn't you?
  • doggiedocdoggiedoc Posts: 2,246
    edited 2012-10-07 09:08
    Martin_H wrote: »
    Glad to hear it. My Circuits and Electronics I professor gave a quiz where he outlined a circuit that wasn't working, and we had to explain what our first debugging step would be. The correct answer was check the power supply.
    My first IT job mentor taught me Rule #1 is the very first thing you do is check the connections. I was really surprised at how often "my computer won't print" turned out to be a loose cable! To this day Rule #1 is still good IT - but maybe I should addendum "Check the power supply" to it. :D
  • GadgetmanGadgetman Posts: 2,436
    edited 2012-10-07 13:30
    Generally, when the user reports 'The Computer won't print,' they have somehow managed to switch it on and probably have a program running...

    Of course, I've seen people plugging the USB-cable in the RJ45 network connector on their PC...
    Back in the days of 2 COM-ports you often had a 25pin connector for COM2, and one 'clever' guy had found a male-male adapter to put on that port so that his parallell-cable would fit...
    Or the reverse, that they have managed to connect a printer with only a serial interface to the parallell-port of the PC.
    These days, it most often means that the computer is either not on the net, or that the printer is faulty.
    And when the printer is faulty, someone probably already reported it and stuck a big note on it to warn others off... Which they never notice...
    (People get surprised if I'm grumpy and unhelpful when they call me saturday evening or sundays and tell me that they can't print their 'important documents'... We have about 5 or 6 big Multifunction printers at the main office in my region, I refuse to believe all of them are down at the same time. The Print server? I set it up, I KNOW it's stable... )

    Now, a "Can't log in" message, that is fun...
    1. Vacations quite often resets the password memory, it seems...
    2. Temporary user from some temp service got their contract extended and forgot to tell IT about it...
    3. The computer isn't on the network, and the user has never used it before, so no cached credentials. Happens all the time with new laptops, so I always try to get the user to log in before letting them leave with it.
    4. The computer credentials was deleted from M$ AD because it was off the net for more than a certain period of time. (Common rule in large organisations)
    5. Did you check the Caps Lock or Num Lock?
    6. Are you absolutely certain? (Oh yeah, you need to ask about that twice... )
    7. Is the darn thing even on the network?
    8. Is the user trying to log onto his computer, or onto his main application?

    I was a frontline HellDesk operator for years... One of the best, even.
    There's a reason I only do the 'hands on' cases these days...
    (Only makes me want to strangle the people who are in the frontline and can't register a proper case, instead of the users who can't tell me what is wrong)

    The biggest problem when fixing a computerrelated is to get the user to actually tell you what is wrong in the first place...
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