Cant get touch probe to work

There is definitely something magic happening with the probe stuff, but I have no clue what :( I've gotten messages from two more people with two different issues. One gets the probe stuck in triggered state from time to time, and another is getting wild jitter. For the life of me I can't figure out what is causing this. I've gone over the code in the app a dozen times. The firmware is working as expected. Tested the crap out of it, and the triggering is handled reliably within 2 microseconds. Motion detection code has been around for over a year, and has been working as expected.
And then, why is it happening so rarely?
Basically I'm about to start suggesting that people burn some insense in their shop to expel bad spirits... Don't have any better ideas.
 
ok, I can certainly use as is..

If you want me to do some testing, let me know
I have serial bluetooth terminal
I can put a scope on signal line and look for noise, etc


Not sure if important, but when I measured signal wire to ground, it goes from 5v to .2v
 
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Well, I powered the TouchDRO adapter with a battery pack USB power, and it worked. Now, 6 hours, tried again, and it failed.. same error. :(
 
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buffdan said:
Well, I powered the TouchDRO adapter with a battery pack USB power, and it worked. Now, 6 hours, tried again, and it failed.. same error. :(
Click to expand...
So, you are one of three people I know having issues with touch probe. All three are different, and I can't reproduce or even come up with a clue what is happening.

The firmware definitely works as expected; 99.9% sure of that. I've tested the probe functionality for hours at this point (probably tens of hours), stepped through the code, even ran it on an automated rig and recorded any misreadings. There were none, and I did this with 10 random adapters.
"p" vs. "q" was a typo on the website, by the way. It was correct in the little flyer that came with the adapter, but on the site I had them backwards. 3 is "q".

The input is braindead simple - a schmitt trigger that is connected to the input pin. That is too dumb to have issues. I.e. we are not talking about high frequency stuff or things that can have resonances.

The two likely culprits are:
Your touch probe
The application

To rule out the probe, you can use BlueTerm or TerraTerm, connect to the adapter and make sure that the data stream shows "p1" when the probe is triggered, and "p0" when it goes idle. If this is working, then the issue is in the application. If not, there is something weird with the probe or the input.
 
Thanks Yuriy.. Unlikely the application..
I will try the Bluetooth monitor, and look into drewtronics. :)
Sorry to give you gray hair over this..
I will report back when I have info/resolution.
Thanks again for the great support.
Dan
 
buffdan said:
Thanks Yuriy.. Unlikely the application..
I will try the Bluetooth monitor, and look into drewtronics. :)
Sorry to give you gray hair over this..
I will report back when I have info/resolution.
Thanks again for the great support.
Dan
Click to expand...
Dan,
Before throwing money at this, let's make sure this is not a bug somewhere.
Just because something is rare doesn't mean it's not an edge case bug that you are exposing by using the app differently.
Regards
Yuriy
 
Dan, sorry for the delayed response - got bogged down with other work.
I looked at the terminal capture you sent, and one thing that jumped out is that you are making very small final movements. TouchDRO needs a decent amount of movement (a few mm) to detect the direction. I'm experimenting with the values as we speak, and will either tune them in the app, or make them user-configurable.
It's a bit of a compromise, since capacitive scales have a tendency to "jump" and if I make the values to aggressive, the probe will trigger randomly when used with those scales.

Regards
Yuriy
 
thanks Yuriy, it errors with inches of travel - 3-4"
Let me do more experimenting.. I havent had the time.
Let me do testing before you waste your time..
Thanks!!
 
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