I actually think that its the Picaxe’s ADC Pin is faulty because i just noticed this today, I was just checking the IR Sensors connections again and found that the middle pin (input pin) was able to be moved and it was bent in an awkward direction and so i bent it back to straight, the soldering connection looks good, but i don’t know, and i don’t have a potentiometer to check it (im going to buy one today or tomorrow) if this were the case would i need to replace my whole project board? as for the Sharp Sensor, (tested with 1.5 volts) if i move my hand in front of it the voltage will start to vary, but if i keep my hand still it will go to 1.5 volts and nothing else, to me this seems like something is wrong with it because if it stays at the voltage it was given when it looks at still objects how would it be able to detect them in this code?
Nah Its ok i can order another one, I live in Alaska, US and shipping cost a lot to ship anything from anywhere else internationally or nationwide, I think i might have found the problem too, I think there might be a problem with the project board…
If the pin on the board is damaged you can replace it. Use multimeter to check if they are ok. Locate the pinout of your Picaxe chip from Picaxe manuals and check the resistance between project board analogue input pin and corresponding ADC pin of the chip. Resistance should be 0 ohms.
If you don’t have potentiometer lying around you can build a voltage divider (potentiometer is a kind of “variable” voltage divider) if you have some resistors. I take that you are new to electronics so playing with a potentiometer/voltage divider and familiarizing yourself with Ohm’s law could be a nice exercise. Simplest thing would be measuring resistance between all potentiometers pins (without hooking it up to anything) with a few different potentiometer’s positions so you get to know how it works. Keep your amps down when you connect things to your Picaxe so you won’t burn anything. With a simple voltage divider to test a ADC it would not really matter but high currents would just waste power. Too high currents will also make your robots smoke as you noticed earlier. Remember that you are dealing with milliamps here (for example Picaxe’s digital outputs can source/sink 20 milliamps per pin). You can find current ratings from your component’s manuals and datasheets.
You tested your Sharp with 1.5 volts. That’s not enough. Read the datasheet again carefully. From the datasheet you can find Operating Supply Voltage. That’s the voltage you must use with your sensor.
