MpGuino keeps resetting. - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum

bbjsw10 · 10-08-2008, 10:36 PM

I have tryed everything I can think of to solve my issue on this.

It will reset randomly when eoc-ing and shutting off car when parking. I have checked voltage. 4.98v on the output of 7805. Checked all connections solder joints good, car connections are soldered as well.

I have installed a second 12v 2ah battery under dash, which is connected to vehicle with current limiting resistor(600 mah) and a diode. The resistor is so I don't fry the 2ah battery by charging too fast, it also limits voltage to 11.5v going to the guino's 7805.

The last time it reset I had about 140 miles on tank, was going to put some gas in tommorow to get a rough setting on gallon usage. But the guino decided to reset so I have to start all over again.

I have also added a 470uf in parallel with the 330uf cap on output of 7805. I don't know what else to do.

I have noticed the lockup issue I was having has not happened since adding the extra cap and backup battery. And this issue was happening more when hotter out, the guino is out of case right now for diagnosis and nothing has even felt slightly warm to touch.

I am lost please help. Ran out of ideas, other than maybe backlight on lcd maybe?

dcb · 10-08-2008, 11:14 PM

You and ptsmith24 should compare notes cuz he is having some issues too, the thing runs for weeks on end in my cars so there is something different about your environment.

you have an iduino based version? using .73/.74? Any code tweaks?

Is there any pattern to when it resets?

like after a certain amount of time or distance or fuel usage or right when you start the engine or use the horn or kill switch or ???

wagonman76 · 10-08-2008, 11:18 PM

Does yours use a power supply jack, or is it hardwired to the board? Ive seen plenty of power supply jacks and plugs that break internally. But the way it acts up when you shut the engine off seems pretty consistent, besides you have basically a UPS for it now, so I dont think its a main power issue.

Hows your ground? Is it connected right to the car frame, or another ground wire that might be getting fishy signals when you kill the engine?

I also wonder if it might be getting a spike through one of the data input lines. Maybe try higher value resistors in the data lines?

bbjsw10 · 10-09-2008, 01:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcb

You and ptsmith24 should compare notes cuz he is having some issues too, the thing runs for weeks on end in my cars so there is something different about your environment.

you have an iduino based version? using .73/.74? Any code tweaks?

Is there any pattern to when it resets?

like after a certain amount of time or distance or fuel usage or right when you start the engine or use the horn or kill switch or ???

Iduino - Yes
Version .73 no tweaks
No pattern random (main problem with tracking down too can't duplicate at certain intervals)
Just when either shutting off with coil kill or ignition. No other items causing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wagonman76

Does yours use a power supply jack, or is it hardwired to the board? Ive seen plenty of power supply jacks and plugs that break internally. But the way it acts up when you shut the engine off seems pretty consistent, besides you have basically a UPS for it now, so I dont think its a main power issue.

Hows your ground? Is it connected right to the car frame, or another ground wire that might be getting fishy signals when you kill the engine?

I also wonder if it might be getting a spike through one of the data input lines. Maybe try higher value resistors in the data lines?

Uses a connector but a good one, no way could be loose connection there. I believe also not a power issue anymore as well.

Actually I have not checked ground, I may look into this tomorrow.

I was wondering same thing on spikes on inputs. How much larger of a resistor should I use in there and still receive signal?

wyatt · 10-09-2008, 01:31 PM

I was having a very similar problem. Mine would lock up, the LCD screen would go blank, come back... for no apparent reason. I just started going case-less this past week, and whenever it acts up, I pull off the road and start poking around. I found that the resonator on my iDuino board is lose, so I will be re-touching that with a soldering iron. I stuffed some napkin between it and the chip, and it has worked flawlessly for 3 days straight, (when I would normally get about 1/2 day before). It was not possible to find without poking around at different components when the problem was present, since I had tested all the connections several times and nothing indicated a problem because I was making a connection with the force of my multimeter probes.

cmags · 10-09-2008, 02:36 PM

I'm having a lockup issue too. It's definitely not consistent. Last night it seems like it may have occurred after parking, but it wasn't on shutdown of the engine, because I EOC'ed a qtr mile to my parking spot. The whole thing was hung, couldn't change brightness - the LCD was still illuminated this morning (stayed lit all night).

I have been having some odd issues on the VSS signal, where for a while it was reading the speed just fine, then it seems like it just stopped recognizing the signal right. It was OK one minute (highway driving), then the speed on the 'guino started dropping and for a while showed ~15mph. During this time, even when stopped it showed ~5mph, and seemed variable based on engine RPM speed (in neutral, parked). Then it just dropped out to 0.

Reflashed from .067 to .074. Seemed to resolve the VSS issue (at least for now), but not the hang.

Hardware modifications:
Added 50k resistor at INJ tap (so we have INJ --- 50k --------- 100k/zener --- 'guino)

Software modifications:
Swapped RS and EN (pins 4 & 5) in SW for a wire cross mistake in HW (oops).
Customized "Custom" screen.
Modded Setup screen to position cursor at XX rather than first digit (p=11).

ptsmith24 · 10-09-2008, 03:30 PM

Mine locked up a couple of times. But, since mounting it in front of an air vent (with outside air selected), it hasn't frozen. I'm not ready to say that's the solution that worked for me, but the evidence is there so far. I had it mounted on a piece of trim just in front of the plastic cover on my gauge faces. However, during the lockups, I noticed a good bit of heat in that area compared to just outside of the steering wheel area. Hope that helps. It isn't in a case. Because of the lock ups, I have not been able to get a tankful of numbers for calibration, just yet. However, I'll be driving close to 1k miles this weekend, so it should be good to go within a week.

Magister · 10-09-2008, 03:54 PM

It took me month to find that on my test unit, the problem comes from bad default values of the brownout detection...

At 16MHz the chip need voltage, and when it drops below a certain point, the ATMEGA can execute random instructions or flip bit in memory.

By default the brownout voltage is set to 2.7V which is way too low. The only solution is to adjust the value to 4.3V (change high_fuses to 0xDC) and re-burn the bootloader. I did it with the "parallel programmer".

Now I have never had a reset or bad flash again. Maybe this is part of the problem of some people in this thread.

See Arduino Forum - Request: bootloader options for brownout detection for explanation.

Believe me, this had driven me crazy for months!

cmags · 10-09-2008, 04:08 PM

Interesting. This does make sense, because I never experienced a lockup/reset before hardwiring my 'guino. Prior to that I was running off the 5v from my carPC which was far more consistent than battery power it seems. (But then again, my 5v stand by would only stay on for 2 hrs after shutting off the car, so I may not have been running long enough between resets to see the issue.)

Is there a way to burn a new bootloader with either the iDuino's USB interface or the Freeduino v1.0's serial interface?

bbjsw10 · 10-09-2008, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magister

By default the brownout voltage is set to 2.7V which is way too low. The only solution is to adjust the value to 4.3V (change high_fuses to 0xDC) and re-burn the bootloader. I did it with the "parallel programmer".

Now I have never had a reset or bad flash again. Maybe this is part of the problem of some people in this thread.

Changing this brownout voltage, means what? That it will retain memory upon a brownout?

How do you make this parallel programmer, I have cords and extra sockets for the 128.

ptsmith24 · 10-09-2008, 06:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbjsw10

Changing this brownout voltage, means what? That it will retain memory upon a brownout?

How do you make this parallel programmer, I have cords and extra sockets for the 128.

5 second search.

Arduino - Bootloader

Arduino - Programmer

Arduino - ParallelProgrammer

Start with the last one. Seems to have a good tutorial for what you're doing.

dcb · 10-10-2008, 12:29 AM

The parallel programmer hardware is super simple, I cut the end off an old parallel cable and mapped wires to pins with the ohmmeter, then added a bit of hard drive connector/resistors/etc. There is a giveio utility that needs installing on windows too.

cmags · 10-10-2008, 12:32 AM

I'll see if i can dig up a parallel port connector tomorrow/this weekend and try this out. I know I have everything else needed.

bbjsw10 · 10-10-2008, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcb

The parallel programmer hardware is super simple, I cut the end off an old parallel cable and mapped wires to pins with the ohmmeter, then added a bit of hard drive connector/resistors/etc. There is a giveio utility that needs installing on windows too.

Yeah I made mine the same way tonight, but will not do bootloader. I installed giveio.sys onto Xp and still nothing, it keeps saying "Mismatched microcontroller are you sure you selected the right board" or something like that. It is on Arduino Decimilia.

Oh and made my Guino display "1991 Metro Xfi MPG Gauge" tonight, instead of the normal startup.

cmags · 10-10-2008, 12:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbjsw10

Yeah I made mine the same way tonight, but will not do bootloader. I installed giveio.sys onto Xp and still nothing, it keeps saying "Mismatched microcontroller are you sure you selected the right board" or something like that. It is on Arduino Decimilia.

Oh and made my Guino display "1991 Metro Xfi MPG Gauge" tonight, instead of the normal startup.

I'll let you know how I fare when I give it a shot.. hopefully tomorrow or Sat morn.

Cool mod, but hopefully after we get this reset issue fixed, we'll never see the MPGuino splash screen again anyway...

ptsmith24 · 10-10-2008, 08:28 AM

Couldn't you change the splash screen to come up at the first signal after the 7 minute timeout?

Magister · 10-10-2008, 09:55 AM

I change the diecimila.bootloader.high_fuses=0xdc value, this is the board I select in the IDE (I have a Freeduino Serial 2.0) then burn the bootloader with the parallel programmer and it worked...
My parallel programmer looks like the one on the Arduino web page, a DB25 with 5 wires and taped plugs at the end

Changing the value means the chip monitors the voltage and if it goes below 4.7V, the chip will reset instead of continuing to operate (and do strange stuff).

Also it seems the problem comes not at switch off, but when you switch on, meaning that when you power up, the chip will start to execute code when voltage was greater than 2.7V which is too low for 16MHz, see chip spec in the PDF.

bbjsw10 · 10-12-2008, 01:43 PM

Well I replaced my 100k resistors on the signal wires with 220k. Now to check to see if it works or not.

cmags · 10-12-2008, 05:18 PM

I haven't been able to find time to get into the thing, but I did notice that my VSS dropping out seems to be correlating with temperature. I'm going to add vents and a fan. I'm also going to add a power conditioning circuit to the input. And I'll try the bootloader mod too. I hope that nails it because I'm out of ideas after that...

Also, I had more problems when I had an additional 50k on my VSS line, tho it's doing well with the INJ line. Let us know how the 220k works out...

bbjsw10 · 10-13-2008, 08:50 PM

Well it is still resetting on 220k, I believe it is from the injector pulse though. I noticed today I could duplicate it when bump starting car. I just had to do a failed bump start and it would lock/reset.

I have my vss and injector hooked to ecu wires (soldered them) Is there a buffer in-line possible before the injector and I just tied in too early in the harness?

The thing is I could probably drive 1k miles with it, if I never P&G-ed. It has been operating great while driving normal, I EOC when I P&G. That is the only time this does act up. And once it has a reset a few times, it tends too lock up. When it does lock up maybe 25% of the time the defaults and all messed up. I think it is from resetting and running bad code and going nuts from there.