[Ovmsdev] Flashing Lights

[William Petefish]

#6 has my vote. It may be more complex in code, but easier to impliment on
existing hardware.

I guess it could act similar to the old OBD that cars had prior to OBD2.

William
On May 5, 2012 2:36 AM, "Mark Webb-Johnson" <mark at webb-johnson.net> wrote:

>
> I've been getting frustrated lately trying to help users diagnose problems
> early-on in the GSM connection sequence. We've had problems with SIMs cards
> getting recognised (broken sim cards), with sim locks (PIN lock on), with
> general modem comms issues, and with lack of GSM signal - and all these
> show up as the same red flash, red solid, red flash, red-green-alternate
> indicators. Without getting out a USB-serial cable and laptop, it is real
> hard to diagnose.
>
> Talking this through with Bennett, and others, I think we can do better,
> and I suggest the following changes:
>
>
>    1. Take the LED control out of the individual code files and have them
>    controlled by a central module with its own timer. This module would be
>    told at a high level what to do with the LED (eg; make the green led flash
>    7 times) and would make it so.
>
>    2. Both LEDs off would indicate NO POWER.
>
>    3. On startup, animate both LEDs for a short time to demonstrate that
>    they both work.
>
>    4. Change init code to (a) use AT to verify modem is connected, (b)
>    check for SIM connected and readable, (c) check for SIM PIN lock, (d)
>    initialize modem to our required settings, and (e) AT+COPS for cellular
>    signal search. By splitting this up, to separate check states, we can
>    individually alert on a failure at a particular state.
>
>    5. In general, use the green LED to show status, and the red LED to
>    show the last error (cleared whenever a state is successful).
>
>    6. On startup, you would see the green led count up through each
>    stage, and if it got stuck at a particular stage the blinks would tell you
>    where it is. If there was an error at any stage, the red LED would indicate
>    the error code.
>
>    7. For blinking, I suggest just off for a second, then rapidly blink
>    the code, then off for a second, then rapidly blink the code, etc.
>
>    8. Once we reach a final GOOD state (either GSM with GPRS disabled, or
>    GPRS connected to server), we would just turn both LEDs to a steady
>    blinking pattern (perhaps on for a second, off for a second).
>
>
> As well as the obvious clarity to diagnostics that this brings, it would
> also be for general use to see at a glance if the module is working
> correctly and is connected to the server ok.
>
> What do people think?
>
> Regards, Mark.
>
>
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>
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