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Pixy2 troubles (not getting blocks)

Pixy Software
#1

Hi Pixy People,

I have a few Pixy version 2.1 cameras. The project is that they are going on croquet wickets and reporting the color of the ball passing through to a particle photon when the ball breaks a break beam sensor. I’m using Pixy2SPI_SS and essentially modifying the example code from the libraries. The trick is I have one fully up and running and doing exactly what I want. I was thinking it would be a simple cut and paste and make all the settings the same, however that has proven to not be the case. Is there some firmware update or something obvious that I’m missing?

In my troubleshooting it seems that “getBlocks()” is not getting blocks. Both cameras settings are identical. the RGB led on the camera itself is showing the color of the item in front of it and everything has power. The wiring to the Photon is the same as the functioning version using SPI_SS configuration.

Thanks for the sanity check!

#2

Hello,
SPI_SS can be tricky because it requires a slave select signal to be enabled at the right times. The SS signal is low-going. I would probably start the debugging there. Are you using an Arduino? If so, how are you instantiating your Pixy object? I’m guessing you’re using SPI_SS because you want to talk to more than one Pixy from the same controller?

Are you using cables more than a couple feet long? These can be an issue especially if the datarate is over 50kbits/s.

Edward

#3

Hi Edward,

Thanks for the response. I managed to get myself sorted out. there was an intermittent connection between Particle Photon and Pixy, it was enough to cause communication issues but not enough to be easily noticed. The official clue was when i switched over and started using an Arduino Uno (with the provided cable) and things were working normally again. Thanks again!

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