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RTC, Power and Bug Fixes

A project log for VegeTerrium

A decorative indoor garden/greenhouse

leonLeon 07/27/2016 at 14:180 Comments

After a few month long battle with randomly crashing Arduino, the bug turned out to be something quite simple, as usual... It turns out that the Arduino was not turning off because of a brownout, software issues or noise on the reset pin, but rather overcurrent protection. The reaction of the Arduino is pretty much indistinguishable from a normal reset, and was solved by simply adding resistors between the Arduino and MOSFET's to limit surge currents because of gate capacitance. Now if you looked carefully at the schematic, you would also see that I've added an RTC (the DS3231) and a button of sorts along with the resistor. The final change that was made, is switching to an external power supply for safety and efficiency reasons, freeing alot of space on my breadboard!

The last thing I'm going to mention is the electrical tape between the MOSFET's, I added it after thinking it was the root cause for the problem, and while it was a necassary modification it still wasn't what solved my crash.

Now, the basic hardware is done and it's time to start coding!

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