To control AC from your arduino I'd suggest using a SSR (Solid State Relay). You can vary the on/off cycle using PWM.

Dupont style connectors are compatible with those on the Arduino boards if that's of any help?

It seems to be a problem with the R2 board. Had the same thing myself.

http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,134129.msg1009019.html#msg1009019

I've seen signatures that are along the lines of 'Do not PM me a question unless you are prepared to pay for consultancy'.

A doctor and a lawyer were talking at a party. Their conversation was constantly interrupted by people describing their ailments and asking the doctor for free medical advice. After an hour of this, the exasperated doctor asked the lawyer, "What do you do to stop people from asking you for legal advice when you're out of the office?"
 
"I give it to them," replied the lawyer, "and then I send them a bill." The doctor was shocked, but agreed to give it a try. The next day, still feeling slightly guilty, the doctor prepared the bills. When he went to place them in his mailbox, he found a bill from the lawyer.

Oh yes, that all makes sense. It's just that I'm likening it to a similar situation I experienced as a youngster with a model railway / railroad. With the simple variable resistance controller you could get better control by using the half wave rectification feature. I'm assuming that this gave the motor half as many 'jolts' a second as full wave thus giving finer control? Hence my thoughts about reducing the PWM frequency?

Of course this could all be the product of a fertile imagination!

No I'm not, and I'll check that out later.

I don't really know which section to put this in... Motors, Programming or other!

I have one of the very small, cheap dc electric motors which I have fitted into a model vehicle. Presently it is driven through a 2N2222. So far so good.

In order to control the motor's speed I use PWM. However, when starting from zero, once the pulse width gets to a certain value the vehicle shoots off like the proverbial scalded cat. So I am thinking along the lines of reducing the frequency of the PWM in order to hopefully give the motor a 'kick' at the lower pulse widths in order to start it rotating.

Has anyone else had experience of this sort of thing?

Merry Christmas

David.

Just a guess - in that case what I would try is a regular, externally clocked '328 with crystal and caps. This would demonstrate if there was a problem with talking to sensor using the internal clock speeds.

On the power supply to the chip, as close to the chip as possible.

You have configured the '328 to use the internal clock haven't you?

I started off with an Oomlout kit. I've still not tried all the experiments listed in the book that came with it!

See reply number one (post number two!). If anyone can sort it out for you Don can.

Well I'm still running XP and all my Arduino COM ports are double digit! But the very low numbered ones are/were for system peripherals I believe. As you can tell I'm no expert in this area, just know what works for me!

What I have done before to test it is open the Arduino software without the board connected, go to Tools/Serial port and make a note of what ports are there. Then when connect the board I get a new port appear and that is the one I select. Unfortunately I believe that this process doesn't always work, depending on the operating system, etc! But it does for me.

Com1 doesn't sound right, but there again it could be.

Have you done the loop-back test to make sure everything is communicating properly?

Have you done the loop back test?