Hey,

We discovered a very odd problem with our PIC18LF2520's. When you
approach the PIC it reboots. With some experimentation we found that
it's because of sensitivity to static electricity. In other words
grounding onself it doesn't happen, and deliberate charging causes the
PIC to reboot at physically further distances depending on the amount of
charge you're carrying.

This is bad.

Note that the MCLR is configured as an output to an LED, so I don't see
this as being the reason for the reboot.

Further. We have found that sometimes when you start them they just
keep resetting. In the main method we have the basic configuration, like
setting the ports LO, turning on LEDs, configuring the tranceivers, etc.
There after we print the software name+version to the serial port. When
watching the serial, all you see is the name+version being printed in a
loop. The code has no loop wrapping this, and the only way for this to
happen is if the main method would be repeatedly called, and again the
only way I can see this happening is with the PIC enter/recovering from
reset continuously.

This is bad :/

I'm not sure if these 2 problems are related. Though the latter definitely
makes the system unusable, because once it occurs the only way to fix
it is to turn it off/on until it starts to act it's age.

Any advice/ideas would be more than appreciated. The engineers over
here are down on ideas. If you need more info, just specify what and
I'll send it along.

Quintin Beukes
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