Hello guys,
I have two Seeed Relay boards attached to my spider and as soon as i switch all eight relays on, the Spider immediately reboots and went i touch the NXP chip it get pretty hot to the touch…
So I’m guessing the relay boards are drawing more current than what the CPU pins support, and if that is the case why in the world was it designed that way and how would one convert this relay board to introduce external power…?
please let me know if there is hope to convert the relay board to use external power to drive the relays…
i hope Seeed will consider this and redesign the board to allow for external power.
Or even better, would it possible to create a module that could be plugged in to any Gadgeteer board and supply with external power? it would look like the extender module but with an Barrel jack where one would plug an external power supply to drive whatever is connected on the other end?
I would hope that the relays are being powered by the +5V line from the cable. If that’s that’s the case then you could use external power via an Extender module between your relay module and the mainboard. Be sure to tie all the grounds together.
Hi ianlee74,
thank you for the speedy reply, would you please walk me through it as I’m not all that savvy with hardware but i do not mind taking risks.
I found the eagle files here but my eagle keeps saying it is corrupt… so i’m not sure if it is indeed corrupt or it’s my version of eagle that’s outdated:
HI,
i found an older version (1.0) of the hardware .brd and .sch files included with Gadgeteer source code that works,
so i opened them and this is what i have:
So can I ask, without turning the 8 relays on, does things seem to work correctly? If you only turn on 4 for instance?
In the circuit diagram they are showing them running via the 3v3 line and the signal switching a transistor on to enable the relay. There’s already a current limiting resistor shown in the circuit too.
Can I ask how you’re powering your Spider? To me the symptoms also look like a brown-out. Is it possible your spider has always been as hot as it is?
Hi Brett,
If i power the Spider with the USB, and run the application which does nothing but turn the relays one by one. as soon as it hits relay 5 sometimes 6 on the second board it reboots.
So if i switch to a 12V 4A transformer, it turns all 8 relays and then reboots… almost immediately after relay 8 is turned on.
and the chip get particularly hot when the spider restarts… when it is booting back up to be precise. i mean really hot…and then it cools almost immediately until all 8 relays are switch back on and the cycle continues.
So if i have one Relay board with all four relays on, things seem to be running normal, I’ve left it running with four relays on for 4 hours and the chip is not hot at all…
Architect,
Funny you should say that because that is exactly what i did and guess what it has an issue…relay1 comes on and as soon as relay2 hits bang the board reboots…
I’m sorry to say this but these relay boards from seeed have an issue with the solder quality of the socket… i complained about this when i first received them and got a replacement and now it has the same problem. some of the pin are either not soldered or shorted… this really sucks because i wasted a good 16 hours debugging this, at first i thought it was my software causing a the issue so i had to practically rewrite the whole thing.
i noticed seeed have version 1.1 of this module maybe they have fixed the issue… I’ll shoot them and e-mail and see if i can get a replacement AGAIN.
luckily it didn’t fry the board…
Only relay1 turns on as soon as relay2 or 3 tries to come on it reboots instantly…
I’m not gonna mess with this one anymore because i know if continue i will fry my Spider and regret it…
this is version 1.0 of the board and they are currently selling version 1.1 so maybe they have fixed the issue with the new version… i just hate it when these kind of things happen… after all of these wasted hours i can’t even remember what i was doing… dang…
anyway, i’ve written Seeed for another replacement, and i just hope i’ll get a good one this time…
just to make sure that it is just a bad module and not a bad design all together could someone please try this and report back…
just plug two relay boards, SDCard Display and turn all 8 relays on.
Just a guess…can you check if any of the ctrl pins are shorted to their respective transistors(bypassing their resistors)? Use continuity test on your multimeter or an ohmmeter
Hi Gus,
i noticed that the NXP gets pretty hot when VS2010 is deploying the application to it… is that normal?
basically if i put the back of my finger on th eCHIP and hit Debug on VS2010 as soon as it says deploying assemblies… the chip gets really hot and then cools back to warm…
is that Normal ?
Note: the DP USB Module is running very cool, it’s not even warm…
Please advise.
here are some of the specs of my spider:
Spider version 1.0:
EMX version 1.1
I’ve also noticed the writing on Atmel the Chip is a little warn off. not sure if i received it like that or it turned that way from usage.
The bad think about this whole situation is that i took my Spider with overseas trying to demo a system to a new Client… so i can’t even send it back to GHI for checkup…
Now I’m not even sure what to do next… help GUS help…
Does the processor gets so hot (You can not keep your finger touching the processor) if you deploy the same application and the Relay modules are not physically attached? Attached LED7R modules instead if you have any.