The DigiX > DigiX Support
DigiX SMOKE! (Dead R.I.P.)
PeterF:
Yumyum? I hope that one is doing something food related! :-P
So when will the funeral be exeng... or will you just finish the half-commenced cremation? :o
I just powered my DigiX via the 3v3 pin with a stable 1A capable supply, and it appears that the WiFi side can't be powered that way... it was drawing somewhere around 100-120ma @ 3v3, and didn't connect to my router. I then powered it via USB (so 4.7-5v) and it is now pulling 180-220ma (oh wait... that may also be the onboard led blink... is running the blink sketch IIRC and is in time with the surges). Pull the WiFi enable jumper, and it is 130-170ma). There was a minor drop in power consumption when I tried the same when powering via 3v3, but only 10-15ma, so not sure what to make of that.
Maybe solice can help me with this though, since he has a number of DigiXs in captivity... does your MCU get hot? Like, put your finger on it after it has been running for a few minutes and it is noticeably hot? And even if you shove a heatsink on it, it still does a good job of warming the heatsink up? Do you know if it is possible to lower the clock frequency (easily!) to reduce heat/wasted power? That was the main think that made me decide to use a teensy / Atmega328 + Oak for one or two other projects instead of the DigiX... I wanted to use it for the wifi + nrf + oodles of memory, but then it just seemed a power hog.
Solice:
Hrm.. about an hour or so of being on, and it gets up to 95 F (35 C) according to the IR gun. Not dangerous, but certainly shows there's some wasted power somewhere. It seems that the warmest part is the MCU itself, so I'm not sure what to do about that. I'm not well read on this chip. It's an Atmel chip, so there could be fuses.
I was going to look this up for you, but the datasheet appears to have hundreds of pages, and it's getting late. Good luck! http://www.atmel.com/ru/ru/Images/Atmel-11057-32-bit-Cortex-M3-Microcontroller-SAM3X-SAM3A_Datasheet.pdf
PeterF:
;D ;D ;D
Well, as long as yours is nice and toasty also, then all's good... I got ambient of temperatures of 33C at the moment... so that won't be helping! ;) I was hoping to avoid the datasheet (at 1459 pages it's a wee bit longer than the 660 of the Atmega328 ... which is long enough for me :D ), but looks like I'm out of luck if I do want to drop the temp... as you said... there should be a fuse setting, or hopefully a runtime function/variant possibility so it can clock up and down as needed by the application (not that I have had much luck seeing if there is something for the Due, let alone the DigiX).
Thanks for that... I'll probably keep on with the AVR or Teensy + Oak approach then for that sort of low power + WiFi capability
exeng:
PeterF... you ask:
--- Quote ---So when will the funeral be exeng... or will you just finish the half-commenced cremation?
--- End quote ---
Well, as soon as I stop staring at the board and imagining lifting the MC and putting down a new one. Probably not cost effective as the MC is about $10, and a ChipQuick removal kit is about $15, all Sans shipping. Then there is the skill required to pull this off (no pun intended), and then successfully put down the new MC. Finally, don't know if the MC needs any boot loader programming. But can't help dreaming about it.
It's really difficult to let my DigiX go.
PeterF:
Well... what have you got to lose (other than a little bit of time and money)? :-P It might be worth it just for the experience.
As far a bootloading... IIRC, because this is a SAM3X based board, the bootloader is pre/hardcoded into the ROM at the factory (SAM-BA), so it shouldn't be an issue.
@Solice: I meant to mention earlier - the DFPlayer modules seem pretty good... I'm just using them for looped music playback so far, and they sound ok, and they do have some peculiarities to work around (such as any serial information requests made whilst they are playing will make the audio skip for a moment whilst it processes the data :-/), but you can relatively easily work around that by waiting for it to gell you want's going on, not the other way around... I could see a Digispark controlling them without too much drama... making real compact throwaway designs :)
Edit: I don't know if either of you find this interesting... it popped up in today's news feed, and is probably the smallest SAM/ARM development/breakout board I've seen so far ;)
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