Group Work
The group assignment this week was realtively simple: measure the power consumption of an output device.
Thankfully, Jacob had already attached a servo motor to his PCB from the previous week, so we were able to easily measure the voltage on his board using a multimeter
The result was about right; we measured 3.059 volts for the output, which makes sense; some voltage is lost to resistance in the circuit, but overall it worked.
Objectives
Originally, I totally misunderstood the objective for this week. Like I understood that it was about outputs…and somehow neglected the physical outputs. Instead I ended up focusing on trying to make the ESP32S3 Sense take still pictures and output them to a computer. I’ve moved most of that information to Week 8 and 13, because it was much more applicable to those projects.
Thankfully, I got another chance to test output devices (if simply) while troubleshooting my final project!
The Problem
When testing out the coincell battery with my bluetooth keypad, I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t discover the device while it was only hooked up via battery.
The most likely answer, after testing connections, was that it wasn’t enough current for the ESP32 to run the program. To validate this hypothesis, I put together a quick LED circuit with a 150ohm resistor. I then connected these to the D10 GPIO and GND.
Next, I wrote a quick Blink Test code that would toggle the LED on and off every second.
Then I tested this while hooked up to my computer to ensure it worked.
Finally I ran the blinktest while hooked up to the coincell.
Sure enough, the LED could barely turn on. If it couldn’t run a simple blink test on battery, the Bluetooth surely wasn’t going to happen.
Solution
With a little board surgery I managed to swap the coincell for a 3.7V Lipo battery. Once again, after confirming proper voltage was being read, I decided to use the Blink Test to test the output on the LED.
Success! Obviously this isn’t the most extensive use of an output device, but it was extremely helpful in aiding the debugging process for my board. I hold a great deal of respect and love for that makeshift LED circuit that helped me fix my final project.
