Flora ColorCam: troubles in Flora-Paradise

RE: Flora ColorCam: troubles in Flora-Paradise

linkaspers — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 09:36:03 GMT

Thanks for the comments guys! I received an email from Element14 saying they had contact with Adafruit and a new Floraboard is on its way!
I really hope it won't break down on me again.. In order to get my project working, I'm going to have to sew the Flora in an environment of foam and felt.. I'll try to cover up as much as I can with the static safe package James mentioned. But I can't cover everything. Fingers crossed!

Btw, tombstoning James? Really? Haha, who knew!

RE: Flora ColorCam: troubles in Flora-Paradise

tpcipri — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:16:41 GMT

I agree 100% with John's assessment of the capacitor. That looks like a manufacturing defect and I would see if you can get the board exchanged. Most likely the capacitor will be damaged when you try to resolder it and you won't be able to get the board replaced if you try and fix it yourself.

RE: Flora ColorCam: troubles in Flora-Paradise

johnbeetem — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 19:16:02 GMT

The rather colorful technical term for an SMT component standing on end like that is "tombstoning". I don't have a Flora schematic or part placement diagram, but it's looks like it's a capacitor next to an SMT crystal and thus part of an oscillator circuit. It would be a good idea to resolder it flat, otherwise the oscillator could be unstable.

I don't know if this is causing your symptoms. They sound more like a problem with getting the boot mode right for the micro-controller. Is there a jumper that needs to be in place for the uC to boot itself instead of waiting for a download over USB? I'm not an Arduino expert, so I don't know what they need.

RE: Flora ColorCam: troubles in Flora-Paradise

e14 Contributor — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 18:28:17 GMT

Microcontrollers are highly susceptible to shock, vibration, static electricity and power surges. Most likely the micro received some static charge built up on the fabric that damaged the IC. Maybe there is a way of isolating the fabric from the surface of the chip or covering it with a static safe package and then sewing it into the material?