Low Battery

I’ve been iteratively developing a Battleship-style game, and on my latest test run the program runs for a few seconds, but then the following appears on the display

LOW BATTERY
0mV

PLEASE
TURN OFF

I left the device on the charger overnight, but it still continues to behave like this. I disabled sound in my game but it behaves the same way. Other games from the standard game collection run OK. I’ll probably try some experiments in the code to see if I can link it to something there. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Also, I’m curious, is the system charging when it is turned on and plugged in to a computer’s USB port? That’s how I have things set up most of the time when I’m developing for the Pokitto.

Can you run a previous build of your game? or if you can’t, try running only more part of your game, like showing sprites, etc?

I’d say it could be a junk pointer or an overflow, especially if the standard game collection runs OK.

Is it just your game or does that happen with other games?
Is the Pokitto off when it’s on charge?


Also just in case of a worse case scenario:

Does the back of the Pokitto feel particularly hot?
Does the case look tighter than it used to be and/or does the battery appear to have ‘grown’ at all?

(Currently in my mind (note I’m not a hardware expert), this is one of two or three things that might be happening.)

It’s looking like some sort of code issue. I patched around some of the logic, and I’m not hitting that screen now. I wonder if there is some sort of interesting crash leads to the “low battery” screen. If I end up isolating some naughty code that isn’t too embarrassing to share I will follow up. Thanks!

I found it. It was an out of bounds array reference that I think was always there, but somehow it wasn’t causing problems earlier. My take away – certain run-time crashes can land you in the Low Battery screen.

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Ah, nasal demons.
(And arguably a heisenbug.)

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The funny thing is, that Low Battery screen is a vestige from the Gamebuino, only there for compatibility and should virtually never appear.

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That’s why I love those old platforms. Bugs can get so weird haha

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