can I power my blinky at 5v? it powers up fine and the sensors see over 1volt difference between black and white but I can’t get it to program.
Hi, thanks for the comment. I could have sworn that we used the blinky at 5v (from USB device programmer) during product development, but I’m not 100% sure. The CPU chip and other components should work just fine at 5v, but there may be something in the program code for reading the sensors that doesn’t work quite right at 5v.
Programming failures seem to be either “kit doesn’t do anything when the website flashing stops” or “during the middle of website flashing the kit LEDs start flashing”. The first failure type indicates that it missed some of the clock pulses from the Clock sensor, so it’s still waiting for more flashes. The second failure type indicates that it incorrectly read some data from the Data sensor. What behavior are you seeing while programming? Does the LED ever flash during the website flashing? Can you try increasing the delay to something like 100?
If you can try powering it from two AA batteries, that would be a good quick test to ensure the hardware is working correctly. I’ll think more about the sensor auto-threshold process to see if or how it might break when powered from 5v.
I put it on a 3vdc power supply and finally got it to program. my computer monitors were just not cutting it but the samsung tab did it right off the bat at full brightness.
i will have to try it at 5vdc next time and see if that works but right now it is going in the battery case (removed the guts) and will be mounted on my dash as a faux alarm system using the scanner leds…
thanks for the help.
Ah, thanks for the update. Some LCD displays use a high-frequency backlight flickering (similar to smartphone displays when below full brightness) that really messes with the flashing programming process. Glad you got it working!
so I was also able to program it from the usb power. here is a video of my project. you will have to excuse the poor video during the programming but you can see the leds flashing in the reflection…
Well hey, that’s pretty cool, thanks for sharing the video! Glad you were able to get it to reprogram!