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Prop1 needing reset after power up

Started by GregH, October 23, 2007, 09:44:00 AM

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GregH

Just had a quick question.  Occasionally upon powering on the Prop1, I have to press the reset button in order to get the program to run.  I've come across this a few times on various Prop1's we have in our haunted house.  Sometimes, it seems a result of a GFI being tripped or using the breakers to shut off power.  It's important for the Prop1 to be able to restart properly every time since I cannot always be available to reset the board.  Is there anything I can do that would help avoid this problem?  It seems that some Prop1's I use run flawlessly while others can be a bit more flaky.  Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.  Thanks!

JonnyMac

October 23, 2007, 10:04:19 AM #1 Last Edit: October 23, 2007, 10:06:18 AM by JonnyMac
How are you providing power to the Prop-1?  That you're tripping breakers indicates a load problem -- and if the power is sagging the Prop-1 could get into a la-la-land power zone where it's not quite doing a hard reset on its own.  I get criticized for this, but I feel quite strongly that one should ALWAYS over-size wire based on analysis of system requirements (especially when those systems are expected to grow).  Most people tend to under-size and that leads to problems just like this. 

Suggestion: Make sure that your Prop-1 is not attempting to drive outputs right after reset -- give it 250 milliseconds or so to get out of reset and for power to be fully stabilized.
Jon McPhalen
EFX-TEK Hollywood Office

ufo8mycow

I think he means that he is manually triping the breakers and GFI's to shut off the power rather than walking around and unpluging or turning off each prop/