Shannon Hicks

If you measure 3.3v on the Sw_5v pin, then unfortunately you have a board with the incorrect regulator. There’s no way to get your board to generate 5v unless you replace the regulator. While it is possible to replace it if you have the right tools and you have experience removing and replacing a SOT-23 surface mount device. However, we have…[Read more]

Did you put a solder blob across the pads of P3 on the back of the board? You’re using INT0 in the code, so you need to close the pads that connect the RTC interrupt signal to pin D2, and according to the Stalker 3.0 wiki, that is accomplished by shorting out P3. I have not used a Stalker 3.0, but I know on the Stalker 2.3, the board would go to…[Read more]

I’m not sure why your code didn’t post correctly. Maybe because you attached it as a .ino file. Try just pasting it into the “code snippet” box when you’re typing a reply. Just hit the “Add Code Snippet” button in the row of buttons right above the text box, past your code into the window that pops up and choose “Arduino” from the Language…[Read more]

I’m glad it worked. We’re working on switching out all of the Amazon inventory with new boards and we’ll be testing each of them first for proper battery connections. It can sometimes be hard to solder to a battery which is why I suggested doing the board first. The next run of boards will have a different battery holder and board footprint so…[Read more]

I just did some more testing with a dozen boards. Out of all of them, I found one that exhibited behavior similar to yours. It looks like the green solder mask paint is thick enough on some boards that it is preventing the battery’s negative side from sitting completely flush against the circular ground pad on the Mayfly board. You can easily…[Read more]

I just posted a helpful serial communication sketch. Try that and see if it works for you.

Some Bee modules might need additional signals or control lines to work properly. That’s why many of the Bee socket’s pins are connected to some digital pins. For example:

Bee CTS –> D19
Bee RTS –> D20
Bee DTR –> D23
Bee RI or Assoc –> A5 (via…[Read more]

The Mayfly has two serial UART ports. They are designated 0 and 1, and also called TXD0/RXD0 or TXD1/RXD1. When referring to them in the sketch, one is called “Serial” and the other is called “Serial1”.

On the Jumper Settings page, it states:

SJ8: Connects the Bee socket TX signal to Mayfly TXD0 (UART 0) or TXD1 (UART 1). Default position…

[Read more]

That’s odd that you measure 3v on the battery alone but nothing when it’s installed in the holder on the board. Even a mostly-dead battery should read something besides 0.000v. You usually only see that if there’s a short circuit somewhere on the board (which it doesn’t look like there is, from looking at the photos), but the battery would have…[Read more]

That’s odd that you measure 3v on the battery alone but nothing when it’s installed in the holder on the board. Even a mostly-dead battery should read something besides 0.000v. You usually only see that if there’s a short circuit somewhere on the board (which it doesn’t look like there is, from looking at the photos), but the battery would have…[Read more]

Can you take a focused picture of just the back of the board and one of the front?

I haven’t had any problems with the Mayfly boards not retaining the time. I just tested 2 boards that have been on my bench for several months without any external batteries (other than the CR1220) and they both still knew the correct date and time. I then got out 5 new boards, inserted new CR1220 batteries, and then programmed them with the…[Read more]

Yes, I’ve done a variety of power measurements with the Mayfly board, so I can publish a table showing the different options. I’ll put a link to it here when the page is posted.

The Atlas Scientific sensors work fine with 3.3v VCC, so just connect the 3.3v pin on the Mayfly header (either the D22 switched or the constant 3.3v VCC pin) to the Atlas board along with a ground line. Then choose 2 free digital pins for the comms, like 6 & 7 or 10 & 11, and edit the first few lines of the sample code to change from the pins 2…[Read more]

If Windows doesn’t find the drivers automatically, you’ll need to install them manually. I just installed the drivers on a dozen new Window 7 machines and WindowsUpdate was able to find the correct driver each time. The FTDIchip.org site has instructions for how to do that. Note that there are 2 different drivers that need to be installed: one…[Read more]

Try this DHT sensor example. It shows you how to power the switchable Grove connectors, and you can just replace the DHT stuff with some SoftwareSerial code to use either the D6-7 or D10-11 pins for the serial comms.

Or you could use the D4-5 connector, the default jumper sets it to 3.3v constant. The D6-7 and D10-11 sockets are always…[Read more]

Thanks for the information JimMoore. I’ve personally used several dozen of the microUSB cables from that same shipment and haven’t had an issue with any of them, but we’ll make a note of it for future orders. I checked out the board that JohnSmutny had the issue with and it was indeed a bad mechanical contact inside the slide switch that caused…[Read more]

Yes, if you’d prefer to use the hardware D10 interrupt, just cut the trace and solder a jumper over to the D10 pin on the header row. Then you can use “INT2” as the interrupt.

The Mayfly has 3 hardware interrupts, D2, D3, and D10. Since the first two are part of the serial UART, that only leaves D10 as the only available hardware interrupt. On the Mayfly v0.3 board, the RTC is connect to A7, so you have to use a “pin change interrupt” library to handle an interrupt from something other than one of the hardware pins.…[Read more]

John is right, just about any sensor you find should be able to work with the Mayfly, though you might have to add some interface circuitry or adapters depending on the power requirements and communication protocol of the sensor. I’ve got Mayfly board working with digital output sensors (either TTL, RS232, or SDI-12 outputs) and analog output…[Read more]

The power switch on the Mayfly is a DPDT switch that has 2 functions. One pole switches the power input line to the main processor power rail, and the other other pole switches the power supplied to the FT232RL USB chip. So if there’s a defect in the switch mechanism on only one of the poles, it’s possible that the Mayfly will still power up and…[Read more]