BlinkyTape on RaspberryPi B+ disconnects and reconnects

zuhairpzuhairp
edited September 2014 in BlinkyTape Troubleshooting
Hi,
I got my BlinkyTape a week ago and have had great success with the Python library on Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04. I haven't had much success with it on my RaspberryPi B+. I can usually use displayColor to show the color, but displayColor(255, 255, 255) causes the BlinkyTape to disconnect and then reconnect to a different port (e.g. from /dev/ttyACM0 to /dev/ttyACM1)

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Comments

  • ThreeethanThreeethan
    Hmm...I wonder if the new Raspberry Pi is sending over the data too quickly. The tape can reset if we send it too much data too fast; I thought the Python had some protection against that but I'm not seeing that...

    Are you using the buffers or not with this sketch?
  • zuhairpzuhairp
    I'm using whatever is in the default sketch. I'm only using python to control the lights.
  • Matt MetsMatt Mets
    This could actually be caused by the BlinkyTape drawing a bunch of power really quickly when the LEDs are switched on at once, and being cut off by the RasPi. If you can, I suggest powering it through a powered hub, or using a lower brightness setting. Embedded computers like the RasPi are generally more sensitive to USB power fluctuations than regular desktop computers.

    We actually do all of our production testing using Python on RasPi, but using a powered hub, and it's been very stable in that configuration.
  • zuhairpzuhairp
    Yeah, I suspected that could be the issue. Going through the powered USB hub does indeed fix the problem.

    Thanks!
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