I know the "Hardware Not Found" error is quite common - although it seems to have a wide variety of causes. I'm hoping someone with more experience might have some suggestions for me as I've hit the wall fairly early into my first robot. I've tried a bunch of things as suggested in the Picaxe manual and on this forum, but with no success so far. My details:
- I'm doing the first robot project.
- Bought the Let's Make Robots Start Here Robot Beginner Kit via Solarbotics.
- Have installed MacAXEpad 1.5.1 on a Macbook Pro running OS X 10.10.5.
- The Mac seems to recognize the USB cable correctly. When I click on “Find AXE027 Cable” it says “AXE027 cable found as /dev/tty.usbserial-00001014". (I tried clicking the Test 3 -6V option button, but I don't know how it's supposed to work. Didn't seem to do anything.)
- I think that I have the right mode. (But I tried a bunch of them, just in case.)
- I checked that the board is getting power. It's getting 5 volts of power. I checked a bunch of places on the board including the pins that power the microcontroller.
- I think I have the microcontroller in the right way. (I tried it the other way just to be sure.) Here's a photo of the board.
- I've done a bunch of Resets. (I hold down the Reset button and then Click PICAXE > Program. And then let go of the button 1 second or so after the splashscreen comes up. Get this error when I do that:
- I don't know how to do the other tests that the manual talks about. For example, I have no idea how to check to see if the microcontroller is fried. I can't think of any good reason why it would be. Supposed to be tested before it's shipped out, and didn't have any power reversed or anything like that in the short time I was working on it.
In short, I have no clue what do do next. Any advice would be sincerely appreciated!