Note: This is note a complete guide but may help of help to you.
Today someone just came to me said that he has got his Atmega development board faulty with full confidence and I just said it's not possible. And even after a one day hard work, he couldn't find mistake in simple circuit. The thing is many people may be pretty good at designing, coding, making the things but just go blank, when a working things suddenly starts malfunctioning. There are unable to figure out, what went wrong even in simple circuits and assemblies. I would just write some basic things that may help.
When you have many individual circuits/components connected to each other, there are better ways than just doing random things. Individual components may be some IC, microcontroller, motors, motor drivers, Xbee wireless modules, sensor, etc.
We can have two approaches.
First one is to just disconnect all the components from each other. Then start connecting the components one by one to build up the complete circuit. At each stage, the behavior should be tested to verify if circuit is working as it should. This way you can be sure, the components connected till now. As soon as circuit malfunctions after adding a component, then that newly added component is faulty.
Second approach is to remove component one by one from the circuit and testing at each stage until the remaining circuit behaves properly.
If circuit is too large, then second approach may be useful. But if malfunctioning may lead to damage, like heating of ICs, then first approached should be followed.
The above two approaches may sometimes can't be used, when individual components can't be tested until all of them are connected in the circuit. In such cases, you can replace each component by new one, one by one. You can just hope that new one would be working properly.
Today someone just came to me said that he has got his Atmega development board faulty with full confidence and I just said it's not possible. And even after a one day hard work, he couldn't find mistake in simple circuit. The thing is many people may be pretty good at designing, coding, making the things but just go blank, when a working things suddenly starts malfunctioning. There are unable to figure out, what went wrong even in simple circuits and assemblies. I would just write some basic things that may help.
When you have many individual circuits/components connected to each other, there are better ways than just doing random things. Individual components may be some IC, microcontroller, motors, motor drivers, Xbee wireless modules, sensor, etc.
We can have two approaches.
First one is to just disconnect all the components from each other. Then start connecting the components one by one to build up the complete circuit. At each stage, the behavior should be tested to verify if circuit is working as it should. This way you can be sure, the components connected till now. As soon as circuit malfunctions after adding a component, then that newly added component is faulty.
Second approach is to remove component one by one from the circuit and testing at each stage until the remaining circuit behaves properly.
If circuit is too large, then second approach may be useful. But if malfunctioning may lead to damage, like heating of ICs, then first approached should be followed.
The above two approaches may sometimes can't be used, when individual components can't be tested until all of them are connected in the circuit. In such cases, you can replace each component by new one, one by one. You can just hope that new one would be working properly.
