Tie Green LED to transmitter

[jacobbenlewis]

David requested that we try to determine if the transmitter is no longer transmitting (due to a low battery condition) and do something with the green light if so.

[jacobbenlewis]

My current attempt will check the transmitter address every 5 seconds. If it does not match the programmed address then we know it's not responding for some reason. I just don't know if the transmitter will continue to respond over SPI even if it doesn't have enough juice to actually transmit. I can't test this without a variable power supply. Can @LoneWolf367 or @davidsthayer take a look, or maybe let me borrow a supply?

Committed in 04d4d72.

[jacobbenlewis]

Just to keep this issue current: I tested with the VPS and found that the transmitter is working all the way down to the point when the whole board shuts down, so the solution described above may not work. This doesn't jive exactly with what David has seen with units getting low on batteries, so maybe there's something else going on?

[davidsthayer]

We have some other field testers trying to duplicate my results with the low battery. I understand you and Daniel had a conversation about the voltage regulator. Apparently we swapped out that part on the BOM and the new one doesn't have the same spec? So I guess that idea is on hold for the time being until we can verify that a low battery condition causes the radio to stop before the rest of the circuit.

[jacobbenlewis]

Reviewed the code after our talk yesterday (in which @davidsthayer mentioned that the green LED is turning on when the transceiver is failing). The code I had in there to try to detect a low battery condition is still in there and is what is causing the green LED to come on. So it's not really doing what it was intended for, but it's trying to be helpful!

Should that be removed or the failure conveyed in some other fashion?

[davidsthayer]

It was so happy to have a purpose that little LED! I'm pretty open to
whatever you guys think is the best policy as far as bits of remnant
code. Once we get a handshake firmly established between TXr and RXr
maybe steady green indicates good communication. Don't know if that's
possible but if so it would override that little bit of code completely.

David Thayer
Motion Dogs
805.788.0280

motiondogs.com

On 7/2/15 9:58 AM, jacobbenlewis wrote:

Reviewed the code after our talk yesterday (in which @davidsthayer
https://github.com/davidsthayer mentioned that the green LED is
turning on when the transceiver is failing). The code I had in there
to try to detect a low battery condition is still in there and is what
is causing the green LED to come on. So it's not really doing what it
was intended for, but it's trying to be helpful!

Should that be removed or the failure conveyed in some other fashion?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#30 (comment).

[jacobbenlewis]

I'm definitely for getting rid of remnant, dead, or unused code. All I'm saying is if this bit happens to be useful we can leave it in. Otherwise I'll remove it next time I'm in there making changes.