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I let it run, just to watch it. The large display is almost mezmorizing, on bench inputs anyway. After a while, I don't know really, but about 90 minutes later I checked on it and the LCD was dark - as in off looking.
I repowered the device - nothing. I tried to redownload the program, thinking that maybe the program had been corrupted. But, I couldn't connect with the protoshield interface attached. Once I disconnected the shield, it downloaded just fine. I was able to send the program again, but upon power up the LCD would not come on.
Poking around with a logic probe to try to do a sanity check (nothing was hot, smoking, melted, etc.) and when I touched the high side of the resistor for the brightness display, the LCD appeared to glow. No display, just the backlight. Curious.
I powered it down and swapped out the Freeduino board (thinking it may be toast) for a spare, flashed the program, attached the shield - nothing different.
While I dug around for some documentation, it was sitting there unplugged, i.e. no power.
After a few minutes, I tried it again, ready to test something else. Viola! The LCD came up and it began to display active data -- for about 10 seconds before it shutdown again. Curious.
This time I left it down for about 20 minutes. Upon restart it ran for a few minutes before stopping.
So, that leads me to think that there is a thermal problem. Is it the LCD or something else? Does the 2X16 LCD from NKC have a thermal safety state? Has anyone else encountered this?
Mine may be different as I have a ribbon cable hot glued to the back and it is covering up one of the epoxy spots. It is not glued to the spot itself, just the edge of the board, but there is not much air in between. Might that be contributing to an overheating condition? It was just sitting on the bench, not in an enclosure.
Any thoughts?
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