I’m THIS close to getting my hexapod working. I have finally found a computer at the office with a serial port (I work at Intel, and you’d be amazed how few computers around here even have the darned things anymore). I tried both a USB-Serial cable (no brand name to be found) and a standard serial cable. Both passed the jump pins 2 & 3 test with lynxterm, but I could never get the software to find the SSC-32, and the green light stayed on the whole time. I tried jumping the RX and TX pins as a test to see if I’d get an echo, and I did not.
About halfway through, I noticed the green light wasn’t on anymore. I power cycled the card and the green LED came on for a split second, servos jumped a bit as they sometimes do (separate 6VDC power), but after the initial blink the light remained off.
Here is my configuration:
BAUD jumpers = both jumped vertical (115.2)
Serial port jumpers both vertical to enable serial mode.
9VDC power to VL
6VDC power to VS1, jumped to provide to power to VS2
I have 21 servos plugged in, and they were working before, but now nothing. I have tried resetting the baud to 9600 and reconnecting RX/TX to my arduino, still no love.
I did volt test the 9V battery, and it appears to be providing 6.9V. Could this be the problem?
The Led on the SSC-32 is not just a power on light. It will normally start off on when powered up. It will then later flash as it receives serial data, regardless of if it is valid serial data or not.
Sounds like your jumpers are correct, although a picture would help make sure. Usually when in doubt recharge/replace batteries and see if that helps. A 6.9v charge on a 9v battery implies it is probably toast. I also assume the VS=VL1 jumper is removed.
There are a lot of not so great USB to serial adapters out there. When you plugged it in, did it give you a communication port? If so, did you try telling Lynxterm this port number and set the baud rate to 115200? If so try typing ver in the command window and see if you get any flashing and any response.
Great news! It was the battery, it connected first time when I put in a new one.
New problem: I’ve been adjusting my servos, and I’m almost done, but suddenly the terminal is reporting “Can’t connect to SSC-32” and returning garbage characters when I type ‘ver’.
Any ideas? Could the EEPROM have gotten corrupted? If so, is there a way to fix it?
Even weirder, everything is suddenly garbled. What can i do?
EDIT: I have tried rebooting both the card and my computer. Still I get the garbled text, and “cannot connect.” I was happily adjusting servo positions and saving successfully until suddenly this happened.
Can you connect using Lynxterm? Now that you know it’s the battery, have you tried once again using your original (USB) computer? lynxmotion.com/p-567-free-do … xterm.aspx
The new battery allowed me to connect with Lynxterm no problem. I updated the firmware to the newest, which worked fine. I was able to open the registers and begin setting calibrating the legs. During the course of that, I had to write the changes and shut down the bot, as I’d accidentally reversed the order of a couple of servos. No problems.
On my next connect, ver reported the new firmware accurately, and I loaded the registers I’d written previously and started calibrating. When I tried to save, I got “Can’t connect to SSC-32”, and subsequently ver returned garbage. I opened up the firmware dialog just to see if it was working and saw garbage.
Also, I should note that the garbage characters change between sessions, now it’s only got one junk character before the firmware version, but even after rebooting the machine, the SSC-32, multiple times, I still get the same problem.
First though that comes to mind is to try to revert to a previously functional state.
Does your computer pick up the SSC-32 properly under device manager? Baud rate is correct?
If yes, can you re-install Lynxterm and then try to re-install the firmware?
If not, consider a new chip (might save some time): lynxmotion.com/p-624-ssc-32- … -chip.aspx
We may be able to exchange the SSC-32 - contact us via [email protected] and provide your invoice #.
Thanks for the offer, but as it turned out, another new battery was just the ticket. Apparently in the 25 minutes of adjusting the SSC sucked enough juice out of the battery that it didn’t have enough to maintain a proper connection. WOW!
Is there a better way to approach this? I got my calibration done, but it took two batteries.
