@ThePhoton haha

@AnindoGhosh Welcome back matey!

@Kortuk Thank you :-) Good to be back!

good morning

@jippie Hiya!

hello there

Yep, hi there and others

helloo

anybody can help me find any solution here for this question ? electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/64093/…

Not here, I saw the question earlier but there could be a lot of things really. I guess you only have the one module not another to compare against?

I'm sure the module is working properly because I used it before

and also here , in Iran, its really really expensive module to buy another one

maybe I should migrate to my homeland ;)) Armenia

BTW I just want to know is the schematic right ? I mean should I connect grounds together or not ?

( I tried both modes :( but want to know which one is correct ? )

Can be frustrating when you only have one thing to test against. In general looking at that diagram yes you should tie all grounds together, so GND and Vcc of the part marked USB2TTL should be tied to the Wifi module assuming they are both 3.3V devices.

hmmm

let me test it right now in one minute

I just noticed "I tried 5v mode of my converter but no luck !" which could have blown the Wifi module if it's not 5V tolerant.

you mean maybe my module is malfunctioned and thats why its not working ?

Yes, it's not really what I'd call a good datasheet but at a quick look I can't see any mention of the UART pins being 5V tolerant. A lot of those devices use ARM processors and them not coping with voltages above the supply input is fairly common. Unlike some small micros the clamp diodes tend to be a lot less 'robust' and a few types I've used can be destroyed by even a few mA (or don't have clamps at all).

@MichelKogan My vote goes to a blown device, after the 5 Volt experiment. Also, if the device "worked" earlier, can you fit it back into that earlier state to verify that it still works?

@AnindoGhosh its working right now ... its blinking the lights is up and its trying to search wifi network, it cant be blown. hmm ?

@MichelKogan It can still be blown. I have an Atmega328 microcontroller here which has its analog input pins blown (at least some of them), yet it blinks LEDs fine on a digital GPIO.

@MichelKogan blown != fully kaput.

i'm sure its not blown because I tested it before with that voltage and it works just perfectly ... ( the time that I didn't have this new converter with 3.3v mode capability )

@AnindoGhosh I just asked another question related to your assumption: electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/64108/…

@MichelKogan ... and you're hoping someone will be able to tell you with just that much info, whether your GPIOs are blown?

@MichelKogan If you're sure it isn't blown, then where is the problem?

No. you made me doubtful :-s

Maybe you are right ...

Maybe I was lucky that time ...

but now its blown

@MichelKogan Only way to confirm is to take that module and test it the way you tested it before. Blinking LEDs will not assure against partial damage.

Then I think its blown :(. Its an expensive device BTW :( thanks

Probably not much consolation but once I destroyed about 20 x $120 modules about 5+ years ago or so by doing a design using somewhat similar modules by connecting 3.3V logic when they needed 2.8V. They worked a while (sometimes weeks) before failing one by one, anyway you always learn from painful mistakes...

Another odd behavior ... if I connect RX to RX and TX to TX, and send any character with my terminal program, it response with double dots ".." ... for example if I send +++ it gives me "......" if I send "AT+WSCAN" response with ".ª.Q....." ... why its functioning like this ?

Possibly a form of crosstalk, but connecting TX to TX (two outputs) together is a bad idea so I'm not really sure what your badly abused chips would be doing now ;-)

@PeterJ You had a sad story Peter :( ... I think I have my tragedy now :(

@MichelKogan, I'm about to head off (getting late here) but I'd say unfortunately you're likely to be out of luck with that module and maybe need a new one and not connect to over 3.3V and be careful with RX/TX.

@PeterJ Thank you so much :)

This mornig we're playing another round of "What's my line?"! Does this user look like someone who might offer "sage advice"?

@ThePhoton I get a "Page not found" error. Someone must have deleted that user.

grEEtings fellow aliens

Xilinx customer service is on a serious downward slide. I just went to their webpage and pretty much anything you click from the front page gets a 404 if you aren't signed in.

(Well, I clicked on "Support" and "Downloads", maybe they'd still be willing to tell you how great their chips are without a login?)

@rawbrawb You can be an alien, but I am a particle.

@ThePhoton THAT I don't get. Oh I do now. AKA your handle

@ThePhoton It's not like their documentation tells you everything either ....

I clicked on Products>Virtex-6 and the page came up in Chinese! Is it still April 1 over there?

@rawbrawb Their webpage is just marketing BS, but their datasheets are usually pretty good.

Products>Kintex-7 is 404!

Maybe they're just fubar'ed

@ThePhoton a close freind was regaling me with how obscure some of the some of the usage stuff is. and the documentation was sparse in key areas of some of the larger blocks.

If you're buying 10k per year or more they'll send an apps engineer over to help you out....

I guess I shouldn't gripe about that because my company pretty much works that way too.

I don't remember the details, but if you followed their examples you were fine, but if you wanted to do some other things you had to "experiment" and he found al sorts of undocumented linkages ...

@rawbrawb Trying to use high-speed I/O's or DLLs or something?

My freind is an ASIC designer and used to be a FAE for Altera

@rawbrawb My Xilinx FAE switched sides and became my Altera FAE a couple years ago. Couldn't stop badmouthing Xilinx after he left.

@ThePhoton yep, something about the CDR's and bit depth ... I thought was something they should have documented. BUt ... then It's second hand ...

@ThePhoton I've always heard that Xilinx was the referable place to work. I know a number of people who were at both places.

@rawbrawb Their parts are just so freaking complicated I don't know if it would be possible to document everything.

@rawbrawb I think they kind of changed gears over the last few years...And as an Altera FAE, he didn't actually work for Altera, he worked for a distibutor.

@ThePhoton and especially on blocks where sub ns timing is important like a serdes ....

@rawbrawb My Xilinx sales rep still remembers me as the guy who expressed extreme scepticism about their ability to do a 100 MHz to 3 GHz CDR (or whatever they claimed before the silicon was released) in their first generation SERDES.

I think they do a lot of documentation before they get actual silicon delivered. Then not everything gets updated to reflect reality, unless real customers run into problems.

@ThePhoton something about package effects and internal routing? and stray impedances? ;)

@ThePhoton some of it also comes from the SW (P&R) side of things. there is a lot of embedded knowledge in the SW.

@rawbrawb Dunno what the real issue was, but every other vendor (Vitesse, TriQuint, ..) at that time was just starting to release CDRs with specs like 0.98 to 1.02 Gb/s, and Xilinx came along and claimed more than an octave tuning range (IIRC)...

@ThePhoton You know you're in trouble if the III/V people are slower than you...

So did you get your wall boarding done?

@rawbrawb This was before SiGe was common

@rawbrawb Done, but not taped.

@ThePhoton that's the part that can mean a lot of extra work ...

@rawbrawb Gonna hire somebody. But when I called the guy I was referred to, phone line was disconnected.

@ThePhoton that's a smart call... I know someone who had to go pick up his guy at the local bar in the morning, before it was too late ... but it was worth it.

Gotta go see if my download is finished in the lab. Later.

ciao , gotta scram too.

sup dudettes

good morning @all

@jippie yooyoyo heya