I’ve been flashing three v3.9 and two v2.2 boards and have been noticing that the serial monitor will stop outputting the events (swing, clash, etc.) after a certain amount of time. I’ve noticed that the time it takes to freeze changes depending on which SD card I have inserted at the time. Is this normal? I stop getting outputs from the serial monitor after “sdtest”, for example.
Edits:
I noticed that this doesn’t happen as often with the Kingston CANVAS Go! Plus SD card I have, but happens frequently with the Electronics123 16GB SD cards I just received
Also found that the “lower quality” electronics123 SD cards are freezing the serial monitor on my v3.9 boards but completing the SDtest with the letters “C” and “D”. Not sure what these letters are for, but saw that the Kingston gave a “!” for the SDtest on the v3.9s.
Interesting theory.
I have also had the serial monitor stop working at times, but it never occured to me that it might be related to the SD card. The SD card on the V3 proffieboard is quite fast, and it’s possible it’s preventing the USB port from working properly somehow.
The C/D is telling you how many streams it can support. Numbers 0-9 is just shown as 0-9, then A = 10, B =11, C = 12 and so on. So seeing Cs and Ds would mean it can do 12 to 13 streams, which is not particularly good for a V3 board.
I guess the other thing you can experiment with is the “sd card speed” option in Arduino → Tools. Not sure if setting it to High or Default will make any difference though.
Either way, if this really turns out to be the reason why the serial monitor stops sometimes, it’s a great clue for actually tracking down the problem.
I’ll give the SD card speed a try when I get home from work.
Since it’s the USB port that you say isn’t working here, would that mean I won’t run into this issue with freezing when the board is installed into the hilt? I’m honestly just trying to make sure the saber will work, but figuring out why the serial monitor is freezing can’t hurt.
Another question - do you have a new recommended source/brand for better SD cards since V3 boards need/can take advantage of their strength?
Edit - on second thought, I’m not sure it’s just the serial monitor that’s freezing when this happens. The only reason I’m thinking that is because the status LED on the V3 boards freezes into a static bright mode, as opposed to the sawtooth with the frequency corresponding to CPU usage
If it’s the same issue that I have seen, then it does not seem to affect regular board functions.
No. Unfortunately I don’t know of any reliable method to obtain good and reliable SD cards.
I tend to buy “sandisk industrial” cards, but I have no idea if they are any better than other cards.
But does that ever happen when the USB cable is not plugged in?
If it’s the same issue that I have seen, then it does not seem to affect regular board functions.
Do you happen to remember if the status LED froze in the cases you’ve seen? I’m worried the entire board might be crashing if it’s static. Trying to enter serial monitor commands doesn’t result in any output either.
But does that ever happen when the USB cable is not plugged in?
Impossible for me to tell at this point, these are just standalone boards not installed or wired into any other components at the moment. I don’t have a test rig, so the only way I can find out is carrying on with the installation and continuing from there.
Is there any info the be taken from the static status LED? I didn’t see entry for that in the “Deciphering the Status LED” portion of the POD.
A static status LED means that ProffieOS just means that the status LED code isn’t running.
There may me a million reasons for that, so it’s not easy to learn anything from a static status LED.
Well, after reflashing the V3 board with SD card speed set to default and using the “lower quality” SD card, the Proffie won’t even start with normal operation when plugged in. Goes straight to bootloader mode. Real headscratcher…