Greetings:
I am still to the Arduino and carefully working through various tutorials and beginners projects. I have a number of successful projects under my belt, but I am stumped by the TV-B-Gone build from Ken Sherrif's blog: Improved Arduino TV-B-Gone
I am using the Arduino Mega (2560), and it appears I have everything squared away on the software side with respect to the libraries -- and a user comment indicated that it was necessary to use pin 9 instead of 3, which also requires a respective change in the main.h file. No errors in compiling or uploading. I tried the code using both pin 9 and pin 3, but no luck. I have inspected and reinspected the build on my circuit board, and cannot seem to find any problems.
So, here are my questions:
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What is a recommended way of debugging or identifying the source of the problem when you cannot "see" the action. In other words, if I was running a servo, I guess I could see whether the motor was turning. But, since I am dealing with an infrared LED, I am not able to "see" whether it is working -- is that correct? If so, what do you recommend for identifying the source of the problem?
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When I press the button switch, I can observe two short blinks followed by three really short blinks -- is this helpful for debugging?
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I have a general purpose npn transistor -- mine is 2n3904, whereas the transistor on the site is 2n4401 is used. Is that a potential problem?
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Any other thoughts on how to proceed? Again, keep in mind that I am a novice, so really technical descriptions will probably not be well understood, but I am committed to doing my homework!
Thanks in advance.
Brian