I dont know what happened.
in fact, I didnt do anything different.
I plugged my power adapter at about 7v, and tried to power up the imp.
nothing happened. I check with multimeter on vin-gnd pins, and it says about 7v.
I tried using P± pins, its the same
I tried the usb port and used the USB jumper, to short the both pins together, and also nothing.
No led blinking…nada.
What the hell happend?
and why. I didnt do anything different than the rest of the times…
It didnt overheat as well.
it just didnt respond.
Is there a way to tell if its the imp or the april board?
Is the imp plugged into the april board socket properly? remove it and click it back in? and when it is inserted back into the holder, are there any blinking leds on the imp?
No, nothing
It was working yesterday flawlessly.
I took it from the last time and just plugged to the power adapter. it was set to 6.5v but multimeter showed actually level of 7v, but its normal, as i use it for a long time.
The april board can handle a wide range … it has the voltage regular built-in for the imp’s power. There’s a pin on the april board called 3V3 … measure between that pin and GND … what is the voltage?
i know it shouldnt be 1.9v :\
without the imp its 3.26v, and nothing is attached at the moment
no wires at the moment ( i had a bunch before, but nothing “crazy” or new)
i only soldered those pins to the board, for having solid and stable connection
hmm.
Without either a spare april board or spare imp you may not be able to figure out which is bad. If you have an led w/resistor laying around, without the imp inserted, try the LED between 3V3 and GND and see if it lights. Make sure the 3V3 voltage doesn’t drop when the LED is there. Basically, put a small load on the april board without the imp and make sure it regulates that 3.3V properly. Also make sure you didn’t leave any solder-bridges between any pins after your unsoldered wires, etc.
EDIT: And make sure that you didn’t lay the april board down on a messy bench and some flakes of solder are now sticking to the back of the april board.
it drops, from 3.26 to 3.11, when i attach a red led to 3v3-gnd
i dont have anything soldered but those pins i soldered to each pin on the board.
other than that, its completely free
The 3.3V regulator should be really precise and accurate.
I would say you have a bad april board (my opinion).
Order another one from Sparkfun. In fact order an april board AND imp. If it turns out to be the april board, you at least have a spare imp (or vice-versa).
Like you, I only have one april board and one imp. With all the messing around I’m doing, I’ll probably end-up in the same boat as you. Welcome to the world of electronics.
Thats very disappointing. I did everything by the book
I was just about to solder all pieces together on sunday.
I just hope that the fact that my board ruined, didnt kill the imp card.
I did order another set, but from a local provider, it takes so long from sparkfun to my country, and with shipment the price is nearly the same…
what happens if i give too less voltage to the imp? such as 2.5-3v, will it just not work, or something worse?
Having another imp isnt too bad just if i have also a board together with it…
to be honest im afraid to check it again with the new products, to ruin another set would be really annoying…
I would say that the imp is probably OK with 3.3 or less. But the question about what caused the problem in the first place … hopefully the original situation didn’t spike the imp with too much before it went bad. I didn’t search this forum for any other posts similar to this … perhaps other people had this same problem?
i can take the current imp to the new board, tough, that will tell me if the imp is OK
but if its not, im still not willing to check the new imp on the old board
is there any way to take caution and avoid such cases in the future?
maybe to pass to vin a regulated 3.3v?
I have 3.3v regulator…so maybe i will put it between
This could have just been a fluke occurrence. Another thought … make sure that you didn’t accidentally bump one of the surface mounted components and knock it off the april board. Compare it closely to your new april board or to the photos on sparkfun. Looking at the april schematic, most of the circuitry is the 3.3V regulator. A couple other components are for the encryped-ID identifier. If you know of an electronic geek in your area, he/she may be able to test the april card more precisely.
If you didn’t damage any components (physical breakage), not much you can do to the power supply portion to prevent future issues. It’s fairly robust as it is.
so i guess i shouldnt get my hopes on another imp project soon :\
when does the 3.3v port suppose to drop? (in general)
the board doesn’t seem to look damaged…i keep it in a small sparkfun box, which i got together with the parts when they shipped me the imp.
Its laying there safe, so i wouldn’t say something accidentally happened to it
I’m still thinking it’s a power supply failure on the april card.
I would try the “old” imp in the “new” april card first. The april card power supply should be robust and protected enough to handle the imp if the imp were in fact bad. So that’s the way I would try the new april card.
just if i have also a board together with it…
