I am trying to connect it to my computer using a serial cable and when i do it and try to test my servos with the ssc-32 terminal nothing happens. I think is has somthing to do with the wrong com port or somthing but it says that the card cannot be found please help. thanks
Do you have any power going to the board?
Does the green LED light up?
Do you have any other software installed and or running that uses the serial port? Programming software, etc…
Have you read the sticky “Serial Port Configuration Must Be Like This!” thread?
Have you used the serial port before?
Hey, I bought my SSC32 a while ago. I waited a while before getting my DB9 to USB cords. I bought 3 of them. Tried them all and was never able to get the green power light to light up on my SSC32 board. I of course then tried to use the SSC32 terminal and try to move a servo, but nothign happened obviously.
What are the common mistakes I might be making here? Is it possible my board is faulty?
The green light turns on when you apply power to the board. It starts flashing when it receives data and stays off once you received data. Make sure you’ve got power connected to VL. Are you using a battery or a adapter?
Xan
doh!
You’re post just helped me realize where I was going wrong. The power. I figured since I’m using a usb cord that would be enough power for the indicator. I didn’t even consider that db9 cords don’t supply power, even if the other end is usb. This explains every thing. Thank you very much!
lol
so whats a good cheap battery I can buy? Whats the quickest cheapest solution I can use to test this?
In the package with the ssc-32 should have been a battery snap clip for a 9V rectangular battery.
Use that clip on VL with a 9V rectangular battery and remove the VL=VS1 jumper.
Then put a 6V power supply on VS1 capable of 2A minimum. This could be a benchtop power supply or a 6V NiCd / NiMH battery pack rated for 1500mAH or more. 
If you don’t have a battery, I have my robot hooked up to an outlet an old adapter I found that outputs 5V @ 2A. It’s some D-Link adapter i found. It works too.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/DarthToa/Robots/rpower2.png
And yes, I know. I should put something around those wires to prevent them from touching each other.
Alright I’m really hyped here. It took me this long to get it working. Finding drivers for my cheapo usb/com cable took some effort. But it works. I got a 9v battery and just used that to test it out. I had a servo running with the lynxterm program.
Question about batteries though. Now I’m sure it works, which one do I get. You say 6v. I don’t know much about this. Is there a limit? A min max? Is bigger better as long as it’s not over the max?
as for 2A minimum. What is this? I assume it’s how much power it has? This depletes but volts don’t? It some how directly correlates to the mAH?
I know I sound horribly naive/uninformed here, but every one’s got to start some where.
Standard hobby servos run on 4.8 to 6v
The SCC-32 runs on 5 to 9v
If you want to power the servos and the board from the same battery pack I would use a 6v pack and depending on the number of servos you plan to use simultaneuosly…it should have at least a 2amp draw.
Batteries are rated on storage capacity (how long does it last, example 1500 maH) and on the amount of power they can deliver at any given time (how fast will it drain if needed, example 2 amps)
You want a battery with ebough capacity that your not chaging it every 5 minutes and that can deliver enough power to keep all your servos running.
Hey thanks a lot, that info helps me understand a bit better.
I want to run the servos off a separate battery than the board. I saw another thread that shows how to do that. I do have another question though. Is there an equation I can use to figure out how many amps I need and maH based on the number of servos I plan to use?