[Robotgroup] BASIC STAMP II EMERGENCY!! (was Robot Head: BS2 Stamp)

[LHudson]

<i>
Okay the SEND button got sent again for some reason.  For those of you who haven't enough to read already, here's the rest of it:
</i>
 
Well there wasn't any magic smoke this time.  It just stopped working...
 
I was doing the Pan and Tilt code that was discussed originally on the thread, and it was working for the most part.  However, there were limitations to the extent of the panning and tilting:  i.e. -- if "650" is the center, the panning servo had a range of 300 - 1100, and the tilting servo had an even smaller range of 600 - 700.  The tilt was noticeable enough for a demo and the degree of rotation was perceptible on the webcam, however I was trying to push it to 590 - 575, as this angle was sufficient enough to see watch Bonnie sitting at the table from my office workstation.
 
What would happen if I went outside of the established boundaries was the same weirdness that I was experiencing earlier:  the stamp would appear to "reboot" and the initialization sequence would repeat in a loop.  Now, if this was the panning servo, it would "bounce" the head a few degrees toward the center while the initialization LEDs were blinking, and once it established the 650 "center" point, the DO...LOOP would execute and the SERIN statement could receive for commands from the dotNET application.  But, if this was the tilt servo, I'd actually have to get up, go to the next room, turn off the BOE power switch, re-position the head, and then re-start the BOE.
 
This went on for a few hours, and then all of a sudden it stopped working.  The green LED on the BOE was still on.  However the reset button didn't turn on the initialization sequence (which causes the LEDs to blink).  Most importantly, when I go the Stamp Editor Debug Terminal, I get the message "No Basic Stamps found".  My first assumption was that the servos were overloaded and drawing too much current, which did something to the stamp.
 
Now it just occurred to me that it could still be the batteries.  I tested them yesterday, and they were all "Green" on the battery tester.  However the thing has been running nearly non-stop for about a week now, and the battery tester is still showing them all as "Green", but I am going to try it with a brand new pack of batteries and see if that makes a difference.
 
Thanks,
 
Scott

--- On Wed, 8/6/08, Def Egge <robodigest at innervate.com> wrote:

From: Def Egge <robodigest at innervate.com>
Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] BASIC STAMP II EMERGENCY!! (was Robot Head: BS2 Stamp)
To: "The Robot Group Mailing List" <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 9:19 PM

At 19:55  2008-08-06, you wrote:
-=-=-=-=-= begin quoted message =-=-=-=-=-


[trimmed]


The question is how did you blow yours? So you don't do it again..


[trimmed]


Andre'


[trimmed]


----- Original Message ----- From: "LHudson"
<lhudson73 at yahoo.com>
To: "The Robot Group Mailing List" <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 7:40 PM
Subject: [Robotgroup] BASIC STAMP II EMERGENCY!! (was Robot Head: BS2 
Stamp)


I just blew mine. Does anyone have an extra or unused one that needs 
some robot code to process? If not, can I borrow someone's tomorrow 
so I can do a demo? Otherwise my comptroller / spouse says I have to 
wait until payday, which is Monday, and that would just be sad.


[trimmed]


-=-=-=-=-= end quoted message =-=-=-=-=-

The was one helluva lead-in, Scott.  ;-)

Andre' beat me to the punch.  Figure out what you did to release the 
magic smoke before you have to replace two of them.


-- 

All the best....

Mike

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