"Can't find ssc-32 card"

Lynxmotion Electronics & Software
1

Hi all,

My 9 year old son and I are brand new to all this… so any help would be greatly appreciated! I’m sure there will be many more questions to come. But right … now we’re having problems just getting out of the starting gate.

We are building a robot for Caleb’s science project. All we have so far is the SSC-32 controller, the visual sequencer and a couple of servos.

We hooked up the 9 volt electronics power and the 6 volt servo power to the VL and the VS1 respectively and the green led light came on.

Then we hooked up 2 servos.

Then we hooked it up to some computers with a serial cable… only two ports show up in the sequencer. Port 1 & 3 on one computer… and port 1 & 4 on another.

But… the sequencer can’t seem to find the SSC-32 on either.

Did we fry the board by having both the 9 volt and 6 volt hooked up? The green light still comes on.

Thanks in advance!

2

Are you using a real 9 pin serial port, or a USB to serial port adapter?

Since the port number changes on two different computers, this looks like a USB to serial adapter, and some do not work right for SEQ and other applications.

It looks like you have the power connected properly. Just be sure you do NOT have the VL=VS jumper installed.

8-Dale

3

thanks for the quick reply :slight_smile:

We’re using the DB9 serial cable that we got from lynxmotion… not a USB

I think the jumper cable was installed…how ever it comes from the factory is how it was hooked up…

when I was first playing with it… i didn’t think that it was the 6 volt was powering the board… but later noticed it was… so do you think we fried it?

If we did… do we new a new board or just an Atmel IC chip?

4

First, make sure the VL=VS jumper is REMOVED from the SSC-32 board.

Then start everything up again and see if it works. You can’t use separate power supplies with the VL=VS jumper installed.

If the green light comes on, you should be OK. :smiley:

8-Dale

5

Hooking up 9V and 6V together should not damage the Logic. The LM can handle upwards of 20V and still give a stable 5V to the logic.

Mine is powered at 10.8V continuously on both VL and VS.

It shouldnt even do damage to the batteries as the difference isnt that great.

If the green light is on then thats a very good sign.

As LG says, it sounds like Comms failure. Check the comms settings and if possible either test to a different PC or a different port.

Perhaps even try connecting from PC to a seperate comms device just to prove PC and lead are OK…

6

Make sure the baud rate jumper settings coincide with what your computer COM port is set up with. I believe the SSC32 defaults or comes from factory at 115200 while your computer defaults to 9600 on OS installation. These must match.

7

If the SSC-32 is not found on two different computers, then check to be sure you have a good serial cable. Try everything with a different cable and see if the SSC-32 is found then.

I should have mentioned this before, but always check the cabling and connections first to be sure everything is proper, if there is a problem.

8-Dale

8

Wow!

Thanks for all the replies guys… looks like this is going to be a great forum!

Going to buy another serial cable see if that is it.

Acording to the manual… the default baud rate should be good for the computer… but i will check into changing it to see if that is it.

I just hope we didn’t do something to the board!

9

Tired the 9600 baud rate… the seqencer is still not seeing it. :frowning:

Off to buy a cable… or can i check it with a VOM?

10

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but…

Are the jumpers on the TX and RX headers (up by the D-sub connector) in their proper places?

11

The tx & rx are both jumped… set up for db9 cable with pc… i think that is right isn’t it?

We are totaly new to this… so all of this imput is very helpful…

thank you very much all!

12

One thing you can try is to change the jumper settings so that the data is looped back to the PC.

Viewing the board with the DB9 to the right hand side, the SERTTL pins are to the lower right hand side.

There is a row of 3 pins with a row of 2 pins below aligned to the left.

When supplied, 2 links are installed vertically connecting the upper left to lower left (labelled TX) and upper middle to lower right (labelled RX).

Remove the 2 links and reposition 1 of them to Connect lower left to lower right (TX to RX).

This will loop communications back to the P.C. and you should see any characters you type being echoed back to you.

This will test the ST202 RS232 to TTL level conversions and does not matter what Baud rate you set.

If this doesnt work, you can test the DB9 lead by shorting pins 2 & 3 of the DB9 fly-lead to the PC. This will loop data back to the PC

Also make sure that NO handshaking is being used on your testing program.

I would suggest using either Lynxterm or MS Terminal for your tests as SEQ would be difficult to see what is exactly happening.

13

Got it working!

Thanks all for the help!!! :smiley:

14

Wonderful! :smiley:

Was it the cable causing the problems for you?

8-Dale

15

Think it might be as simple as a low battery… light was coming on but not quite enough juice… not really sure… just glad it’s working now.

we made a brat jr. with homemade feet and body… will grow into a humanoid with ps2 controler with more time and… money.

Thanks for all the help again… i’m sure we will be using this forum as time goes on.

My son’s invention convention is this weds… 5/23… hope everything goes well :slight_smile:

16

Good luck!