IR Beacons Heating Up

[Tripleoone]

We've built the beacons, and we plugged them into the digital in/out ports 1 and 2 on the edurobot. I've read that they're supposed to be in the pwm 1 and 2 ports, but I'm confused on how to do this as those ones have four pins, and the beacons only three. Our beacons are on because we checked them with a video camera, but they're heating up. Is this bad?
Thanks.
-Natania

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Tripleoone

We've built the beacons, and we plugged them into the digital in/out ports 1 and 2 on the edurobot. I've read that they're supposed to be in the pwm 1 and 2 ports, but I'm confused on how to do this as those ones have four pins, and the beacons only three.

{edit}I just noticed that you said you plugged them into the digital i/o ports on the EDU. You definitely don't want to do this. Make sure they're plugged in to the PWM OUT ports.{/edit}
You're correct that the PWM outputs on the Edu controller have 4 pins but the beacon only has 3. If you look closely on the PWM pins on the EDU you should see that the top pin is labelled "BLK". Make sure that the black wire on your cable from the beacon is connected to the top pin of the PWM output and you should be fine.

Our beacons are on because we checked them with a video camera, but they're heating up. Is this bad?

Probably. Did you use the updated directions to put the beacon together? The original directions in the kit (and the first version that FIRST put on the web) had an error. This document shows the correct wiring diagram for the beacon, so you may want to double-check yours against it.

[Tripleoone]

Thanks so much! I believe we were using the updated wiring, but the fact that they were plugged into the wrong port was probably why they were heating up. I'll try them again tomorrow.
- Natania