CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

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pambrose
 
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CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by pambrose »

Hi Guys,

I have a simple app that logs the capacitance touch values of A2 on the CPX and Touch Pad 1 on the CRICKIT:
https://makecode.adafruit.com/49828-27217-66741-37643

The A2 logging works fine.

The CRICKIT logging lasts about 15 seconds and then the graph flatlines and the only values I get are 3598.

I updated the seesaw firmware to the 1.1.4 version.

My school has made a big commitment to using CPX and CRICKIT in our curriculum.
Needless to say, after seeing this flakiness, I have a bunch of very nervous teachers right now.
I need to calm their nerves as soon as possible.

Can you please have a look and see if you see the same flakiness.

Thanks,
Paul

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pambrose
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by pambrose »

I would greatly appreciate someone from Adafruit responding to this post.

Thanks,
Paul

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Are you seeing the problem with a single board, or can you replicate it across a range of boards?

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pambrose
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by pambrose »

We are seeing it across multiple boards.

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pambrose
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by pambrose »

Can someone from Adafruit please take a look at this issue?
The Crickit/CPX combo is failing in a fundamental way across multiple boards.
Can you please confirm the problem and then fix it?

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adafruit2
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by adafruit2 »

hiya, yah we think this is a bug in makecode/codal's i2c core. we don't have a fix for this right now. the bug is in the reading of the capacitive touch measurement.
the makecode teams knows about this but they have to rewrite the entire core to fix it (because the core provided by 'mbed' has this bug and makecode uses mbed)

right now - the solution is to use the capacitive touch on the 'bare' CPX only, not on the crickit. (so dont use crickit read touch). you've got i think 4 pads on the CPX available?

OR - if you use circuitpython or arduino, those work great!

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pambrose
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by pambrose »

Thanks for the update.

Is there a document that enumerates the known problems with Makecode and Crickit/CPX?

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adafruit2
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by adafruit2 »

thats the only one we know of and its been hard to pin down (we think we fix it and then it comes up again)
we also know that if you use infrared at the same time as audio that sometimes causes a lockup, that's not crickit related
if you do find anything else not working please reply to this thread!

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adafruit2
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by adafruit2 »

we put a warning on the touch/signal pages - sorry about that :( we thought the bug had been fixed
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-cri ... de-signals
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-cri ... code-touch

here's the github issue https://github.com/lancaster-university ... 1/issues/4

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daveo
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by daveo »

I'm a middle school teacher who has invested heavily in the CPX/Crickit platform, which I love, for the most part. But it's been so frustrating watching my students struggle with trying to make anything with Signal IO work... it goes for 20 sec, then hangs, every time. I appreciate the warning "Crickit Inputs such as reading analog/signals can sometimes lock up - we recommend using the alligator connection pads on the 'bare' CPX instead of the Crickit until this is fixed!", but I hope you realize the implications of this major flaw. It basically means robots with no input, or robots that only work for 20 sec. I'm pretty shocked to see that your high quality company let this one slide through. Can you please let us know the approximate timeline for getting this fixed? Until it is, we can't actually use the Crickit.

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adafruit2
 
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Re: CPX CRICKIT Flakiness

Post by adafruit2 »

this bug has been a challenge because its under 4 layers of code, we have to gut a ton of stuff to get to it. so we're not sure when we can fix it because it requires a big rewrite of makecode by microsoft.
the bug only exists in the CPX+Crickit+Makecode combo. if you're using any other combo (say, microbit instead of crickit or CircuitPython instead of makecode, it doesnt come up) we can check in with the makecode team and see where they're at but there's no ETA that we know of & we want to get this fixed too!

we do have capacitive touch on the CPX, and some inputs already on there too. which particular inputs did you need?
if you cannot use the crickits, we can refund you.

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