IR Board Problem
 

We are trying to train our IR board. We connected it to the power and hooked everything up. When we turn it on, the error light flashes for a second and turns off. After that, pushing the little button achieves nothing. Every time we turn the power on, the same thing happens. Can anyone tell us what the problem is and how we can solve/fix it?

Re: IR Board Problem
 

Read Update 10

I believe you have the same problems that we just discovered today. Our board worked fine until this evening right before we head to a final mini regional :(

We have the same symptoms that update 10 explains.

Hope you have better luck.

Re: IR Board Problem
 

Thing is, this is the first time we've plugged in the board (to my knowledge). So maybe it was already corrupted when we got it?

Re: IR Board Problem
 

Unfortunately there were reports earlier of IR boards not working out of the box too :(

Re: IR Board Problem
 

refer to this thread, which solves the problem

Re: IR Board Problem
 

We discovered the same problem last night after we got back from our mini regional practice competition :eek:

Re: IR Board Problem
 

I guess this is what happened to our IR board at first. It corrupted itself. Now I worry about our new one, even if we do add a switch, I don't know if that will help. Our robot pulls so many AMPs that it often goes below 5V while running, which could cause it to corrupt. I wonder if a large, in-line capacitor, before the switch for the IR board, isolated from the rest of the power system with diodes, will solve this problem.

Also, does anyone know where to get the code that the update was talking about? They mention it, but there is no link, and I cannot find it under the competition manual or IFI.

Re: IR Board Problem
 

Re: IR Board Problem
 

Thanks for the help.... Now to figure out the ICSP programmer stuff...

Re: IR Board Problem
 

Does anyone know where to get an ICSP programmer or how to make one? We'd like to figure this out before ship day so we can see if this is going to work.

Re: IR Board Problem
 

We have had our IR board quit as well. Our board had the voltage regulator removed and bypassed and was powered from the 5 volt rail where signals from it were connected. It was working when it was hooked up yesterday, but we power cycled the robot a number of times last night during testing. There were no wiring adjustments so we are sure it was not miss-wired since the last time it worked. When we came in this morning, after patching in an in-line power switch first that was suggested in the team update, and the IR board was not responding. If we put it in learn state it goes through the learn sequence until you get to the fourth light and then it freezes during the second check on the fourth light.

Eugene

Re: IR Board Problem
 

hey, you might wanna purchase / find someone who has
an ICD2 programmer, or a PICKIT2 package

their'e great!
Ran.

Re: IR Board Problem
 

We had success with it today as well. I used winpic to program the chip with a custom serial cable I made late last night based upon a whole lot of googling and research. I too erased before programming to get it to work. For teams in need of doing this that don't have fancy PIC programming hardware or time to order some, attached is the harness schematic I made. I used a PC serial port (and not a laptop) because most of what I read said that the laptop voltage levels are not high enough on the serial port to program it.

Best of luck to everyone. NOTE - I take no responsibility if it does not work for you, damages your IR board further or the PC you use to program it. I can promise it worked flawlessly for me. Just in case, I would not have the IR board connected to your main robot controller while programming the board; in the event there is a problem, it won't hurt your robot.

Re: IR Board Problem
 

Also, if I may make a recommendation... we are now using a Spike to turn the IR board on and off. Whenever the robot is in autonomous mode, it turns on, and when autonomous is off, it turns off. It's a little more complicated than a switch, but I think it is a little smarter of an idea, since you don't have to remember to turn it on and off, and it serves the same purpose.

Re: IR Board Problem
 

I have a pretty detailed post here about that. :)