alphamike27
New Member
I recently completed a solar powered LED lighting (for a house) project. I will post the project after I get time to clean up my code so I don’t embarrass myself.
Basically the project involved monitoring the presence of mains power and the ambient lighting conditions to switch LED modules off and on automatically.
However, I began to experience some very erratic operation of the Picaxe (a 08M) whereas outputs would randomly switch on and off and inputs would change to outputs and vice versa.
Fortunately, I included some “smoke preventing” 330 ohm resistors on the pins which prevented any damage
Suffering from much self doubt, I labored through my coding to see if I could ascertain the problem. However, the few small changes that I affected made no difference, and, as the Serin pin was pulled to ground through a 10k resistor to prevent interference, I was at a loss to explain.
To cut a very long story short, I am running a PLC controlled hydroponic control system in the same cabinet (on a completely different power supply). Apart from lights and water pumps, there is also small air compressor (as used in home aquariums) in the cabinet.
This was obviously broadcasting some pretty strong hash, because after installing an earthed perforated steel shield around the compressor, the problem disappeared.
Just thought I would share this in case others have had similar problems………………………….
Basically the project involved monitoring the presence of mains power and the ambient lighting conditions to switch LED modules off and on automatically.
However, I began to experience some very erratic operation of the Picaxe (a 08M) whereas outputs would randomly switch on and off and inputs would change to outputs and vice versa.
Fortunately, I included some “smoke preventing” 330 ohm resistors on the pins which prevented any damage
Suffering from much self doubt, I labored through my coding to see if I could ascertain the problem. However, the few small changes that I affected made no difference, and, as the Serin pin was pulled to ground through a 10k resistor to prevent interference, I was at a loss to explain.
To cut a very long story short, I am running a PLC controlled hydroponic control system in the same cabinet (on a completely different power supply). Apart from lights and water pumps, there is also small air compressor (as used in home aquariums) in the cabinet.
This was obviously broadcasting some pretty strong hash, because after installing an earthed perforated steel shield around the compressor, the problem disappeared.
Just thought I would share this in case others have had similar problems………………………….