New Raven 2 Issues !

[rocket1017]

I have new raven 2 that I just took out of the box and attached up a nine volt battery. When hooked to a 9 volt battery i get the normal power up red led on for a sec and then blue led flashes about once a second.

But then no start up or status beeps ever !

Any one seen this happen and have a idea whats happening ?

The raven will attach ok to the FIP program and talk. It will even run it;s simulated flight test mode and save data to it memory ok.

Attached is a screen grab of what FIP is seeing note the battery voltage is reporting as zero but it hooked to new 9 volt battery.that was checked with my fluke. I thinking that since the board thinks it has no voltage or low voltage on its battery supply so the start up beeps are disabled. But in reality that is not the case.


Looks to me i have a raven that has experienced infant mortality on power up.

I have used other Raven's and Parrots before with no such problems. Not at all a newbie to rocket electronics. Been using altimeters since they first came out.

Hope I can get this replaced with` a new one before LDRS. I tried to send this message directly to Adrian but his mail box is full.

[Dwatkins]

If the unit is not perfectly verticle or the accelerometer is out of calibration it can do this. Go through the calibration steps and try it again.

Dennis

[cwbullet]

If the unit is not perfectly verticle or the accelerometer is out of calibration it can do this. Go through the calibration steps and try it again.

Dennis

This fixed mine.

[rocket1017]

Tried the calibration of the accelerometers in FIP.
But still as before on power up and at all times no beeps ever !!

[cwbullet]

Have you tilted the altimeter in different positions? Horizontal vs vertical?

[rocket1017]

Yes have tried starting it up in all possible positions. Still silent on power up and all other times.

[Adrian A]

You can send it back and I'll check it out. Judging by the firmware version on it, it's probably about a year old. All Ravens go through a functional check before shipment, so maybe the beeper was damaged during shipping, or it slipped by the check somehow. Sorry about that. I'll email you with the return address.

[BLKKROW]

Did you hook up the battery with reversed polarity?

[rocket1017]

Thanks Adrian I send it back tommorow. It looks like more then beeper as it doesn't report it supply voltage correctly but could a hardware start up glitch be related to no beeps ?

By the way I love your products and engineering that goes into them. Having designed some flight systems for tethered balloon's and other flight hardware I do appreciate all the cool features that you design into your flight computers.

Cheers
John ..

[rocket1017]

Yes it hooked up correctly. Hey I may have gotten my E.E. degree thirty years ago but I not that out of it yet !!
Anyway even if someone did that I sure there is an on-board series diode on the power terminals to protect the board.

[BLKKROW]

Yes it hooked up correctly. Hey I may have gotten my E.E. degree thirty years ago but I not that out of it yet !!
Anyway even if someone did that I sure there is an on-board series diode on the power terminals to protect the board.

Trust me you know more then I do, I actually do not even have a Raven (yet). I was reading the manual last night and saw that mentioned in there so I thought I would use my little knowledge and ask.

[mikec]

Anyway even if someone did that I sure there is an on-board series diode on the power terminals to protect the board.

Nope. From the Raven manual: "The Raven can be damaged by deployment currents in excess of 9 Amps, or by connecting a
9V battery to the altimeter with the leads reversed. Please carefully note the battery
polarity before connecting it."

[Adrian A]

That's one of the trade-offs that goes with making it compatible with single-cell Li poly batteries; there would be too much voltage drop if a diode were in there. Reversing the battery polarity wouldn't immediately smoke the board, but it would cause current to flow through any ematches that are connected, among other undesirable results, so don't do that.

[Threemorewishes]

That's one of the trade-offs that goes with making it compatible with single-cell Li poly batteries; there would be too much voltage drop if a diode were in there. Reversing the battery polarity wouldn't immediately smoke the board, but it would cause current to flow through any ematches that are connected, among other undesirable results, so don't do that.

Hello Adrian A,
Can reverse polarity on the 1 cell Lipo damage one of your magnetic switches? I picked up a battery connector from the hobby store that was for E-Flite RC devices and only noticed after I wired everything up that the polarity was reversed. The switch made a sound but woukld not power the altimeter. I reversed the pins in the connector and everything worked, but the mag switch seems to react slowly to power up and especially power down. Is it just the capacitor slowly draining the charge? When I say slowly powering up and down it is in comparison to your e-bay mag switch setup.
Thanks
Greg

[Adrian A]

The Raven's hold-up capacitor does cause a long delay between when power is removed and when the lights go out. That's by design. You can test the switch by itself with a multimeter measuring resistance from the in+ terminal to the output terminal. It should be over 1 MegaOhm when the switch is off, and near zero Ohms when it's on. Or put a Christmas tree bulb on the output to test it going on and off.

I wonder if you just had a defective battery that was wired backwards? I think there is just a single standard for polarity with those connectors. I have run across some batteries that were wired up backwards and just threw them out.

[rocket1017]

Just a follow up. I sent my raven 2 back to Adrian and he replaced the beeper and sent it back to me by priority mail before LDRS. Great service and support. Thanks so much.