Tuesday, March 8th, 2016
Well, I had a few setbacks in the last few days. It seems that the test setup I had with the Arduino and the breadboard mounted on a plate with power lugs was my issue. I had the Arduino board set up so that it touched the metal base mounting plate and it shorted out the Arduino...but not completely!
I noticed that when connecting sensors on Friday and Saturday, that I was not getting good, consistent readings. By Saturday afternoon, after much testing I thought for sure the sensors were just junk...so I ordered a few more and decided to wait and see what happened with the new ones.
The new sensors arrived, and while testing I was getting the same readings! I could connect to the Arduino, upload to it, but its output was all useless! This made me switch to another Arduino board and hook up the sensor again and I still got garbage output...with the new sensors and new Arduino board! So, I waited for more sensors to arrive and when they did, I got good readings...for about 30 minutes...then something went wrong. Back to garbage on output.
I went through some basic testing only to find out that I had some outputs touching the base plate which shorted the Arduino and the sensors and caused all my problems.
To fix this, I drilled holes in the metal base plate and used acrylic standoff mounts to place the Arduino about 1/4" above the plate and secured it with a few screws into the standoffs.
No more shorting and the tests will now continue!
I ordered a few more sensors for sound and for a real time clock setup and will test those later this week when they arrive.
In the mean time, I am digging out the arm components so that I can mount the servo's in them.
More on this later!
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