TEAMWORK and a little yellow cap!

Since m-Arlo (mid-sized Arlo) was completed on Memorial Day - I've been testing all sorts of code (modifying geometry for odometry) and making sure all is in good working order.

One consistent failure/problem/BUG from day one is that all the code I had for use with the Sony IR Remote - Failed in BlocklyProp, failed in C. All the code worked with the USB programming cable attached, but as soon as I disconnected it failed (when the power switch on the Activity Board WX was in position 2. I tried everything I could think of to solve this problem.

Got Parallax (Matt Matz and Ken Gracey) involved yesterday - today the issue was solved. Andy Lindsay and David Carrier suggested as Matt wrote, "One new guess (Andy and David's suggestion) is to place a 0.1uF cap (the little yellow guy in many of our kits) across the power leads of the IR receiver. Miguel is going to try to duplicate the issue, but the reason for the cap is that motors are noisy, and the PWM driving them might be placing noise on the power lines - messing with the IR receiver." 

The little yellow cap - capacitor in place!

GENIUS! - Everything works perfectly now! I don't know if I ever would have pieced this together (just would not have connected motor noise/PWM with the problem).

Sometimes in robotics - "It takes a village... especially if there are some really smart people living in the village." - (R) Trademark and copyright by Robotics Under the Stole ;-)
Thanks, TEAM Parallax!