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LED light stays blue

Pixy Hardware
#1

Hi again. Sometimes the LED light on the front of the Pixy will change to solid blue and stay like that until it is powered down and restarted. Usually this happens a few minutes into using the robot. The robot still tracks color fine and behaves as it should. I’ll also note that the color red is what it tracks and that is assigned to signature 1 which is of course also indicated as red on the LED. Any ideas why it all of a sudden changes and stays blue?

#2

Hello Scott,
I’m assuming you are using Pixy with an Arduino and a standard Pixy-Arduino cable (yes?) Make sure that you are using the latest Arduino library and firmware. You can find them here:

http://cmucam.org/projects/cmucam5/wiki/Latest_release

It sounds like setLED() is being called. Calling setLED() will set the color of the LED and override any LED activity.

Let me know what you find.

Edward

#3

Hi again Edward,
Yes, I am using Pixy with Arduino and a standard pixy cable. I will check the library and firmware this week for updates (I think the last time I did that was about 3 months ago). I don’t have setLED() called in the code. Another finding was using the robot this weekend in a small room with no shadows didn’t cause the LED to go blue 2 days in a row. It seems to happen more in a large room with furniture and shadows. Maybe when the robot loses sight of the object when the ambient light changes in the shadows? I have not been able to verify this with an experiment though.

#4

It did it again tonight at home. Seems to do it more when I make the object it’s tracking harder to find. I know that sounds weird. The robot still works as expected though. I just can’t tell what the camera is seeing and I like to see the LED illuminate red to know it’s locked on to the object.

On another note. Is there any way to tell what firmware I have on the Pixy when I plug it in? When I first bought both of them I was told to update it the first time I used them and twice after I updated blindly so I don’t know if that was needed or not. I just went through the steps of doing it to be sure. But can I plug it in and see what it’s running?

#5

Scott Callahan wrote:
Is there any way to tell what firmware I have on the Pixy when I plug it in?

I got that part figured out. Everything is up to date.

#6

Hello Scott,
I’m guessing it’s a hardware issue. I’ll have someone contact you.

Edward