Ambient module still trying (and sometimes failing) to update itself

[Frijol]

The ambient module often thinks its firmware version is old. This makes it try to update itself, often every time you run something with it. Sometimes it updates and reports success and you can keep working. Sometimes it goes to "are you sure it's plugged in?"

One weird/possibly coincidental fix I've employed: switched to Port B and it was ok.

[jimbojw]

I've found that using console.log() before the ambient object's ready event will trigger this behavior. Documented here: #70

[johnnyman727]

@jimbojw really glad that you were able to find a reproducible test case. I'll try to take a look at this while at the WebRebels/Nodeconf Oslo conferences this week.

[Frijol]

Have now encountered this at several workshops. Switching to Port B has consistently worked. Not sure why ..?

[jimbojw]

Switching to Port B did not work for me—it only made the issue happen consistently. :/

I've successfully used the Relay module in Port B on my Tessel 2, so I do not believe my Port B to be uniformly bad.

[Frijol]

Investigating the issue. On a standard run of the Ambient module example, plugged in to Port A:

INFO Running ambient.js...
Could not retrieve firmware version and module ID. Attempting update.
[Error: Unable to communicate with module. Are you sure it's plugged in?]

SPI trace gives:

Zoomed in on that last bit (700ms+):

For completeness, here is the earlier bit (400ms+):

The update attempt begins here: https://github.com/tessel/attiny-common/blob/master/lib/index.js#L66

Attiny datasheet: http://www.atmel.com/Images/doc8006.pdf

[Frijol]

Not expecting to have a chance to continue this investigation today, but if you want to continue, the above images should help. Next steps:

1. Figure out what the function is looking for & not finding such that it fails out by reading through the linked Attiny-common code
2. Figure out what the values being passed back and forth between the module and the Tessel mean by looking at the Attiny datasheet and the Logic traces screenshotted above

[johnnyman727]

This should be fixed with a combination of c11274f and tessel/t2-firmware#209.

Should be closed once tessel/t2-firmware#209 is merged and a new firmware build is released.