Hello all,
I started looking into connecting a GPS to a 28X2. As the GPS works better outside, I took my circuit outside and even powered it with a small solar panel. While I had it outside, on several occasions I would return to it and find the indicator LED on the GPS indicating that it was powered and tracking and the LCD display had a cursor blinking but no info being displayed so my Picaxe was not running. I also know this because I have the 28X2 toggle an LED after each pass through the program and it was not blinking. I can press the reset button and everything will start running fine.
I do know that the sun is shining through trees most of the time I have been testing this circuit so I added about 1 Farad of super capacitor storage to the circuit to help with voltage sags as the trees and clouds block the sun. I tested this by removing the solar power and watched the circuit continue running for a minute or so before the Picaxe lost enough power to stop running. With that capacitor in circuit, the voltage does not change very fast in either direction so I was wondering if the very slow rise in the voltage after the sun comes back out from behind a cloud could be affecting the brown out detector.
I would like to know if anyone has any info that might help. If needed, I will draw up a circuit diagram and post my code but as long as the power is steady, the circuit keeps running. I also use time outs in the code so the program does not hang while waiting for input from the GPS.
If anyone has any insight, it would be appreciated.
Dave E
I started looking into connecting a GPS to a 28X2. As the GPS works better outside, I took my circuit outside and even powered it with a small solar panel. While I had it outside, on several occasions I would return to it and find the indicator LED on the GPS indicating that it was powered and tracking and the LCD display had a cursor blinking but no info being displayed so my Picaxe was not running. I also know this because I have the 28X2 toggle an LED after each pass through the program and it was not blinking. I can press the reset button and everything will start running fine.
I do know that the sun is shining through trees most of the time I have been testing this circuit so I added about 1 Farad of super capacitor storage to the circuit to help with voltage sags as the trees and clouds block the sun. I tested this by removing the solar power and watched the circuit continue running for a minute or so before the Picaxe lost enough power to stop running. With that capacitor in circuit, the voltage does not change very fast in either direction so I was wondering if the very slow rise in the voltage after the sun comes back out from behind a cloud could be affecting the brown out detector.
I would like to know if anyone has any info that might help. If needed, I will draw up a circuit diagram and post my code but as long as the power is steady, the circuit keeps running. I also use time outs in the code so the program does not hang while waiting for input from the GPS.
If anyone has any insight, it would be appreciated.
Dave E