ChipKit WiFire Board - 3.8V instead of 5V

[Tawachi]

Hi,

When I set the jumper on JP9 to 5V0, I get around 3.8V between pins pin 5 and ground instead of 5V. Is this normal or there is something wrong with my board.

Regards,

 

[rp-prew]

Dear Tawachi,

I have a quick question. How are you powering your board? Are you using an external power supply? If you could answer that then we might be able to pin point your problem quicker.

[Tawachi]

Hi,

I am powering the board from my laptop using USB cable connected to UART port.

Regards,

[rp-prew]

Dear Tawachi,

We did some testing to figure out the the 5.0V problem. If you take a look at your J17 pins you can see there are two jumper blocks connecting the LDO-IN to VU and then the LDO-OUT to the 5V0. You will want to plug both of those blocks. Next you will need to take one of the jumper blocks and plug it onto the VU pin and the 5V0 pin. then go and measure the voltage across those pins again. Hopefully this will fix your problem. The way that those are set up is for a shield connector. Since we don't want to fry your shield we send the voltage through a voltage regulator which will then in turn make sure your board doesn't fry. Let us know if that helps!

Best Regards,

Bobby

[Tawachi]

Hi Bobby,

Thanks for your help. Unplugging the two jumpers on J17 and plugging into VU and 5V0 pins solved the problem. I could get 5V. However I could no longer program the board from MPIDE. The uploading process timed out. But when I reverted to 3.3V setting, I was able to program the board with no problems. Thanks.