{"id":911,"date":"2015-10-14T21:44:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T01:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/?p=911"},"modified":"2025-04-21T00:54:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T04:54:35","slug":"sailboat-start-timer-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"Sailboat start timer revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have been stalled in my work on my robot. Current bug just seems insurmountable. I would come home and avoid the thing like the plague. So I decided to purposefully work on something else for a while.<!--more-->So I looked around my shop and dug up the partially completed projects. The one that caught my eye was a <a href=\"http:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/?p=56\">Sailboat Race Starter <\/a>that I had gotten stuck on. Every time the horn would blow, the MSP430 processor would reboot. I would like to have this for summer fun so I decided to give the system a new brain.<\/p>\n<p>I picked a PIC16F627A that I had from another project. Not the ideal PIC for this task, but it would do. I got a breadboard going and quickly had the processor up and running. Next I rehosted the code from the MSP430 and got the basic logic working. For this I had to learn the peripherals on the PIC. This took a few evenings.<\/p>\n<p>Once this was working, I hooked up a FET to drive the relay that will in turn turn on the car horn. Got this working without the horn (need to save my hearing!) first. Then around 9:30PM I plugged in the horn, and was horrified to see the processor reboot again just like the MSP430.<\/p>\n<p>But it was getting late so I went to bed. Little good that did as I tossed and turned all night with the problem going through my head. At work I discussed it with friends, and no one had ideas as to the problem, but they did give me things to look at.<\/p>\n<p>So tonight, I tidy up the workbench, instrument the circuit to monitor various voltages, get all the scope trigger points adjusted without the horn plugged in, and then I plug in the horn.<\/p>\n<p>Guess what, I can&#8217;t make it fail. It is working like a charm. Just as designed and envisioned. Now I am really confused. Why did it fail last night but not tonight? What might I have changed? What might I change in board layout that might make this problem come back again?<\/p>\n<p>ARGHHHHHH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been stalled in my work on my robot. Current bug just seems insurmountable. I would come home and avoid the thing like the plague. So I decided to purposefully work on something else for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pic","category-sailboat-race-timer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":914,"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fll-freak.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}