Think I made a mistake!

[brad g]

Jon, I was playing around with my Prop1 board in an attempt to figure out the v+ and gnd outputs on the board and ,while plugged into the walwart, I flipped the board switch to the #2 position and heard a small "pop", soooo, did I just turn this nice, shiny, new Prop1 into a very nice bookmark?

[JonnyMac]

Maybe... but not likely as we tend to design to survive most accidents.  What did you have to connected to the outputs?  What I'm hoping is that you killed the ULN which is in a socket for a reason.  So, remove the ULN2803 from its socket and try to download a program into the board; if that works you're probably okay.  We can sell you a replacement ULN or you can get them from electronics distributors like Digi-Key and Mouser.

If that doesn't work, you'll have to send an e-mail to jbarrowman [at] efx [dash] tek [dot] com to get an RMA so we can look at the board.

[brad g]

Yeah Jon, I'm pretty sure I toasted the ULN as it was the only thing on the board that was hot to the touch (at least I hope that's all I killed!) The unit was hooked up to the 12v 1 amp walwart and the only thing I did with the v+ and gnd sockets was use a digital voltage tester to see if there was any output, having never used one of these boards, I didn't know if the output was constant or required a program to initiate current flow (I was trying to figure out how to best power the Scary Terry board mentioned in my "Blending Servo Motion" post) Speaking of that subject, has there been any breakthroughs?

[JonnyMac]

I have been busy with my Nuts & Volts column this week so I haven't had time to work much on your program.  On that, though, I did order a pan/tilt servo kit from Lynxmotion so that I could test my code theories.

What one needs to remember is that the OUTx terminals switch ground, not 12 volts.  To start a Scary Terry audio player you will connect the GND terminal of the Prop-1 to the ground voltage input of the ST board, and connect the desired OUTx terminal to the Play input.  When you make the control pin HIGH it will be like pressing the play button.  Of course, you only need to hold it on for about 25 milliseconds or so, then release it with LOW.