Hi!
I’m using the Rover with Bluetooth Kit and I’m not being able to turn on the DC motor with the test programs. I’ve checked and the voltage being aplied to the motors seems to be to low, just 1v.
By the way BT connection is just fine.
What could be wrong, am I missing anything??
Thanks
The USB port doesn’t provide enough power to run the DC motors?
Anyway I’m charging the battery to see what happens. Do I have any indication when the charging is complete?
crazee, thanks for the tip. Cbenson, thanks for the help. I’ll let the battery charging the whole night.
So far (about 6 hours of charging for a 2000mAh) when I turn on the switch to power the rover, the red pwr led turns on and after 1 second turns off again leaving the circuit with no power. Should I worry about this?
Now I am confused. The green led of the charging circuit won’t turn on, so I assume that the battery is fully charged. But when I use it to supply the rover the power led turns off just after turning on the power switch. And the motors don’t get even close to move.
Sounds like you need to charge the LiPo battery. Connect the LiPo battery to the white JST connector, and plug the USB to your computer. Leave it there for a good 5 hours to charge fully. Alternatively, use the AA pack with fresh AA NiMh or Alkaline batteries and REMOVE the LiPo jumper at the left rear of the board. Test that the board works when connected directly to the USB plug (no BT modules connected), and only after that’s successful, test with the BT modules.
Not even close. You would risk frying your USB port if you tried to draw 1A from a USB port which can really only provide about 400mA max.
No, but you can connect the 3.7V LiPo battery to one of the analog pins (and GND pin) to get an idea of the voltage (the reading should be about 757 - use the Arduino serial window and analogRead example code).
It’s possible that your USB port is not providing enough current to the charger. There is also a slight chance your battery is completely discharge, in which case the Max1555 limits the current to 40mA. This would also be below the required 50mA to trigger the CHG indicator.
Considering both of those, I would try changing to another port or if you are using a usb hub, plug in directly to your pc, then give it more time to charge.
