Danger!
Resolved by Rich!
I have an electronics question that I hope someone can help me with. The B9 robot has two lights on the chest that flash back and forth. He also has twelve lights that flash independently a little farther down on his belly.
For his "Belly Lights" I bought twelve LEDs that each have a tiny voltage regulator and flasher built into a chip right in the wire. I guess that there is also some sort of diode as well. The wires are both black and they can be hooked up either polarity with anywhere from 5-19 volts. I just put them all in a parallel circuit, hooked them up to my 12 Volt battery and they worked perfectly.
For his "Chest Lights" I found a circuit on the internet to make them flash back and forth. It was designed for 9 Volts. I put it together and tried it with twelve volts. They just flickered. It was too much voltage. I added a 9 Volt regulator and some capacitors, and it worked perfectly.
Here is the problem. If I hook the chest light circuit up to my power source (a 12V battery charger at the moment, not a battery- I don't know if that makes a difference) it works great. As soon as I connect the Belly Light circuit to the charger The chest lights begin to flicker as if they are getting 12 Volts again. I am not sure if they are jumping up to 12 V or if they are flickering for some other reason, but it doesn't make any sense to me. They a two completely separate circuits. I cannot see how adding one to the charger would affect the other one. The charger puts out ten amps; it is not an amperage issue. They are mounted in a fiberglass torso. They share a common ground at the source, but there shouldn't be a ground loop going through the body of the robot. I am just confused.
I did also hook up his simulated neon. It is an array of LEDs that flash when hooked up to a sound input. The chest lights work when that is on, but they do seem to speed up when that is lit up briefly. Again, I am not sure why the chest light circuit is affected by other circuits being connected to the same power source. I haven't even started hooking up motors, etc.
I have included the schematics any feedback would be appreciated.
I have been looking at this problem for awhile and have to agree with Rich. I'd try a diode on that bottom circuit.
Danger I know how you feel about not giving up on things. Can't tell you how many times I've driven myself to the point of pulling my hair out to get something to work the way I want it too ... LOL Stick in there buddy, you'll lick this problem, either that or go nuts trying ... LOL
You could take three 1000 ohm resistors in series between the positive and negative of your 12 volt supply. Then run two wires , one from the negative of the twelve volts to the EZb gnd and one from the top of the resistor closest to the negative of the 12 volts to any analog input pin on thr EZb. Then open an adc graph and it will be like a little oscope. This should display a level that would indicate one third of the 12 volt supply ,ie 4 volts. You may see that the twelve volts is not stable. I think that battery chargers do not have regulated outputs, maybe thats causing your problem . Good luck.
I want to thank everyone who commented on this thread. I did get all of the lights working. I believe the problem was a little bit of everything mentioned. Mainly I think that the circuit that I used for the two blinking lights was just finicky. I took the 9V regulator out, and tried increasing the value of the resistor and adding another resister in series with the potentiometer. It did not change the speed at all. I then put the regulator back in and hooked the second string of lights to it as well. I added 4 diodes, two between the two circuits, and two between the circuits and the battery. I also use the real battery, instead of the charger.
So, here is a video of the lights that I have working. The neon, is my simulated neon made from LEDs. I still need to add the chest buttons, but they are just steady lights. Please disregard the misshapen head. It was a temporary prop to make him look presentable for my Christmas party guests until I get a proper bubble.
Oh, and best wishes in the new year from the robot and I.
Hazaa! I'm so glad you didn't give up and found the answer. Well Done. He looks grand! He's a true bubble headed bobby.