AVR-Chat

Hi Folks,

First, I want to thank every one for their good suggestions in trying
to track down this bug.  Just goes to show you that two (or more)
heads are better than one.

John Samperi and Cat win the prize.  If either one of you is ever in
town lunch is on me.  Turns out John's suggestion lead me to measure
the Vcc and it did indeed fall to 1.3V (from 3.3V) as soon as I single
stepped to the offending line in the debugger.  I had run out of ideas
so I revisted the RF section per Cat's suggestion.  Turns out I made a
layout error and there was a short between the radio output and the
antenna.  Looking back at the entire episode it makes perfect sense -
the bug only appeared when the radio went into TX mode.  I just wasn't
smart enough to see it.

Turns out that Eagle will allow you to make a connection while laying
out the PCB even if the schematic doesn't.  I've just recently
switched to Eagle from Winboard so I'm still learning how it does
things.  Winboard wouldn't allow you to connect two components if they
weren't connected in the schematic.  Now I know so I'll be more
careful next time.

Thanks again for all of your help.  I'd still be staring at the board
without your help.

Richard Cooke
Lake Forest, CA USA 


--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Cat C" <catalin_cluj@...> wrote:
>
> Are those pins turning on some RF stuff that being differently
matched might 
> use more current?
> Did you validate the new RF design some other way, so you really
have no RF 
> shorts (not just DC)?
> 
> If you power from the Dragon USB... anything above a certain power
might 
> turn it off.
> 
> Cat
> 
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