Heltec serial port problems fixed

One of the great things about working with other people is that if you get stuck you can simply hand the problem over to someone else. For ages I’ve been having problems with the serial connection between my Heltec device and the PC failing. I’ve tried all kinds of remedies and even thought one or two might have fixed it, but no. It’s a really frustrating problem because when the connection fails I have to re-boot my PC to make it work again. This rather slows down development.

So, I asked Robin to take a look. He put an oscilloscope on the power supply and looked at what happened when the air quality sensor was turned on. This sensor has a little fan on it and it turns out that this draws quite a bit of current as it begins to rotate. This causes the 5 volt supply to drop to 3 volts for around 50 microseconds, which breaks the USB connection on the Heltec.

Putting a 470uf capacitor across the Heltec power supply fixes this. So we now have fully working serial ports. Yay!