Spencer Review - Dec 2020

đź“‹ Support
#1

Hello everyone, greetings from Greece.

So today I received my Spencer and decided right on to get onto it. Even though I have zero prior experience with soldering, in a just a couple hours Spencer was ready for Circuitblocks. Great packaging, solid instructions, generally an interesting experience, recommended for any age. (Im 26)

A few notes

  1. Soldering pen - [I have the one with the blue light and manual button] I initially connected it to my laptop (through a USB hub) but while soldering I would notice, probably because the iron was not heated enough, that a small quantity of soldering tended to accumulate on the needle, thus making the iron unusable - I had to regularly use a knife to clean the needle of the soldering. At the end I used a 40W iron I had from my Father’s lab and everything went smoothy from that point. Maybe if I had connected it directly to a power supply it would be enough.

  2. Big red button - If you turn or flip Spencer, the button will fall off. A workaround I found was using a little bit of superglue with a stick and now its solid.

  3. Circuitblocks App - [Installed on a Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7] Installation was stuck while on Arduino installation, forced closed the app and it ended up finishing smoothy.

Spencer is not available yet in the projects, so I just changed the settings on the top right corner. Added the SSID and the password, but unfortunately Spencer hasn’t connected and neither does anything when I press the red button.

The light panel is working normally, though the red light is inoperative when I press the red button.

Any solution on how to make Spencer work?

Also, what does the small button do on the back? Is it like a forced restart or reset?

Thanks,

Paul

Update: Spencer lights after 10 minutes of use stuck in a shape, decided to remove the power cable and re-insert and now it doesn’t start at all…

#2

Update 2.0 - Spencer is still DEAD.

I resolded the Capacitors, checked and then did the same with every other soldable object but to no avail. I will bring a polymeter by next week along with a friend who is a Techie to see what happened.

Maybe the system short circuited as soon as I took off the power cable to reset it?

#3

Update No3 - I fixed the problem by connecting Spencer to the USB and click restore firmware… and spencer was alive again. Interesting to see that this was a firmware malfunction after I had entered my Wifi details. Red light works as well.

Now the original problem still stands though - spencer is active, have inserted the WiFi details but neither pressing the button does anything neither there is no response from Circuitblocks for connecting spencer to WiFi.

Any thoughts?

#4

Hey, can you please reach out to [email protected] and someone from the team will help. Please send photos of your build.

Thank you

#5

Hello Albert I have a similar problem with Mac Mojave, I send image and a video to [email protected]. The problem is CircuitBlocks app please help me

1 Like
#6

Hello,
I have/had pretty similar issues:

  • I found that the temp. of the soldering iron wasn’t hot enough to properly solder.
  • The big red button isn’t fix at all.
  • I couldn’t get the 64bit Circuitblocks app running (on Win 10), needed to switch to 32 bit.
  • and most importantly: Spencer stopped to react on button presses:
    When I finished the assembly and got the 32bit app running, I could successfully connect to the WiFi and interact with Spencer. Button press --> command --> answer, all worked (although with a lot of lag, sometimes it took him 3-5sec to respond). However, when I turned him off and later on again, he complained that he couldn’t connect to the WiFi (possibly because I went to another room farther away from the router). So I opened CIrcuitblocks again and entered details of another WiFi with stronger signal there but he didn’t connect. Ever since, pressing the red button doesn’t do anything.
    I tried to power him on/off a couple of times, switches back to the old spot & WiFi, restored the firmware, pressed the reset button, nothing works. The LEDs are on and showing all kinds of patterns, I hear his voice when I turn him on but nothing happens when the red button is pressed. I also can no longer change his settings in Circuitblocks, only when I restore the firmware.

Please let me know what I can do to “reanimate” him?

#7

Hi, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll help. Thank you

#8

Hi. Same issues with the soldering pen here. It gets cold, even when connected to a power supply and not a laptop. Is it a defective one?

#9

Hi, please reach out to [email protected] and we’ll help. Include a video.

Thank you