AVR interrupting/resetting?

[yopper]

Hi,

My wave bubble is almost done and I'm now testing the range and jamming. However, all the time I'm seeing these strange and intermittent errors with the atmega chip. I've never worked with atmel micros, so maybe someone can shed some light on this.

The controller restarts and prints a number then the Wave Bubble 1.0 banner. Sometimes this is a loop it won't get out of (mostly with '8' being printed).

Currently I'm stuck in that I can not get it to tune both VCO's, while tuning either of them separately works fine. I get errors like this:

Code: Select all

---------------------------------
p> Display progs
a> Add prog
d> Delete prog
t> Tune prog
q> Quit
---------------------------------
=> t
1 programs in memory
---------------------------------

Program #1 of 1

VCO 1: 1900 -> 2000 (0, 0)
VCO 2: 900 -> 974 (0, 0)
---------------------------------
PLL for RF freq 1950MHz & prescaler 8: B=243 A=6
0, F36

midpoint @126

bandwidth tuning...
PLL for RF freq 1900MHz & prescaler 8: B=237 A=4
0, ED4
254 done!
PLL for RF freq 937MHz & prescaler 8: B=117 A=1
0, 751
keypress..2Wavebubble v1.0
keypress..


Anyone has some clues on how this may be solved?

Thanks

[Eno]

I'm not as far along as you are, but hope to once I get past this my own problem. Is there any way you can tell me how you programmed to ATMEL uController? Did you have to modify the firmware provided at all? Did you run it from DOS command prompt or what?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[yopper]

Is there any way you can tell me how you programmed to ATMEL uController? Did you have to modify the firmware provided at all? Did you run it from DOS command prompt or what?

I'm using the Atmel JTAGICE MK-II adapter from a Linux Debian system.
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools ... ol_id=3353

This took no effort at all. The make file needed just modifications for the right adapter and after installing the needed packages everything worked out of the box. Big thanks to timor for that.

Packages installed:
avr-libc avra avrdude binutils-avr gcc-avr

I'm also trying to get avarice working for debugging, but that turns out to be more difficult. It needs the cvs version of avarice and apparently my adapter is newer with a different USB identifier. Even with some source mods it still hangs during the intialization.

Hope this helps

[yopper]

Oh, btw: you do have to edit main.c to get the desired tests to run.

[adafruit]

let me get you a more recent version. the code i wrote for the release candidate was, well, 'release candidate' quality. ill upload it in a bit, gotta go dimsum right now

[none_such]

yes, you have to uncomment the individual tests that are located in the main.c file and recompile the files each time. The are all located in the same main routine so it is not hard to find

My output is a bit different: I am using Windoze XP (yuck) and have had no hitches with the AVR Studio for that platform. I can see that the program is crapping out when you tune for the second VCO. There is something very funky about your output: "PLL for RF freq 1950MHz & prescaler 8: B=243 A=6
0, F36"
The F36 looks like it could be an error or hexidecimal output - in decimal it would be the number 3894 and "ED4" would be 3796. they would not be frequencies, probably registers. I get a single number (between 0 and 254 which is the resolution for range of the selected frequencies) so this seems strange to me. CHECK ALL YOUR ICs FOR BRIDGES. Specifically look at Atmel chip and the 7 volt dual switch. The only problem I get sometimes on both units I have built is a "VCO range is too low" if I pick a high frequency for the end. I think I stressed one of the VCO and damaged it: the pll can't see a signal at the upper range on one of the VCOs.

I have built 2 so far that worked for a while but the pll seems to be wandering on both after flawless performance - probably capacitor problem surrounding that element after heating since there is extra flux around these parts. Fried the 3.3 LDO once also. This thing really needs a case so I changed the switch to a longer one to place it in one later. This is not an easy thing to build but if you have patience it can be done.

[yopper]

Thanks for your comments. About the '0, F36' that is the output of some debug lines in pll.c about line 97 in pll_set_freq. They are hex and the values that are programmed into the pll.

About the VCO, I could see that happening if you were using the ROS2500 with the resistor values described in the schematic or the site. As far as I can see they would exceed the 16V max considerably. I'm now using the values I mentioned in another post and they seem to work well.

Actually I do have an idea that I may be using a power supply that is not sufficient for both VSO's at the same time (650mA). If the supply current drops it resets the CPU maybe causing the voltage to rise back again. I'll try another supply and reprogram the reset pin fuse.

[yopper]

Ok, to reply to my own post (spelling corrected):

Actually I do have an idea that I may be using a power supply that is not sufficient for both VCO's at the same time (650mA). If the supply current drops it resets the CPU maybe causing the voltage to rise back again. I'll try another supply and reprogram the reset pin fuse.

This seems to have been the problem. It works now.

I do see other strange power supply issues such as the 12V boost converter haning at 6v after starting the VCO's.

I don't have proper antenna's yet, but with 1/4 wave length wire I can't get further than about 1-2 meters. Does this seem correct? What is the range with good antenna's?

[none_such]

I got one to one and a half meters radius with the primitive antennas. With a multi band antenna and a 2.5 ghz antenna with the specified gain block I got about 4 to 5 times that (I brought it out to field test it only a short time and found I was surprisingly embarrassed to linger in an offensive manner to determine a range of functionality).

Your issue with the voltage drop was not experienced by me except when I was using an input voltage that was lower than recommended (approximately 3.0 volts) with the VCOs both active - this drop was across the board on all voltage sources. When building the power supplies I did get a jump in the approximate 28 volt supply (about 32 volts total), this was because of a cold solder union in the circuit. I do believe your description of why your microcontroller is re-booting itself is highly likely. Your halving of the 12 supply under load could be for a few different reasons, further testing is required on the elements that utilize 12 volts. Some suggestions which maybe completely useless: about 25 mA is the max current draw for ROS-2500 so it shouldn't be an issue unless its broken (which it seems to not be in the single mode) Additionally, the high voltage switches could be examined by isolating them from the VCOs (desolder ferrite and capacitor feeding VCO?) and checking for the voltage drop with both on.
Cheers