Hi,
I’m currently studying for a masters degree in Mechatronic Systems Engineering at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania.
Right now i am working with some Lynxmotion robots purchased by my school in 2009 and i have some difficulties programming a microcontroller mounted on a Bot Board 2 carrier.
I have a CH3-R hexapod all set up with a SSC-32 board mounted on it and the servos connected to the board. I can control the SSC-32 with no problems using a Prolific USB to Serial cable (with a PL-2303 XA / HXA chip). I have to mention that i had some troubles with the cable drivers but i managed to solve that one.
Now i want to be able to control the robot with the PS2 wireless controller and for that i am using the Bot Board 2 in combination with the SSC-32. For the wiring i followed the schematic provided by Lynxmotion in the tutorial: lynxmotion.com/images/html/build99e.htm
I am powering the boards as showed in the schematic 9V in the VL terminal of the SSC-32 with wires to the VL of the Bot Board 2 and 6V in the VS1 of the SSC-32 using a power supply as i don’t have the battery packs. On the SSC-32 the jumpers VS1=VS2 are on and the VL=VS removed.
The power leds are on and i have the USB to Serial cable connected to the Bot Board 2.
I had some troubles identifying what microcontroller is mounted on the BB2 but i’m pretty sure it is BASIC ATOM 24-M progneer.com/uhtml/iron/344.html , because the chip has PIC16f876a written on it.
I have a picture of the Bot Board 2 as i have it set up but it is not a very clear photo:
dropbox.com/s/lo15lkxmqoz1dxc/IMG2157.jpg?dl=0
I installed Basic Micro Studio and when i’m trying to program or find the chip it says “A BasicATOM processor must be connected to program.”.
In the program i selected from the three dropdown menus “BasicAtom” and i don’t know if it is BA 24 or BA 24 RevD but i tried with both and it doesn’t work, and i have selected the appropriate port to which my robot is connected. I have it set up like in the following picture with the exception of the com port that doesn’t show up because i don’t have the robot connected right now.
dropbox.com/s/h13mx5f9o0gnd36/Clipboard01.jpg?dl=0
I tried every last one of the options in the dropdown menus in every possible combination, just because. I tried to program it directly, with the setting “Auto” instead of the chip version, and even from Tools->Preferences-Find Procesors & Advanced settings and nothing works, the processor can not be found.
Now i realise that there could be a lot of variables that cause this but it might be something really obvious that i’m not doing. The wiring is good, the boards leds are on, the USB to Serial cable is connected to the Bot Board 2, and the program detects the port to which the robot is connected, the only problem is that it does not find the processor. I tried with a second Bot Board 2 with the same configuration so i don’t think the microcontroller is broken. The microcontroller seems to be inserted properly, so the problem seems to be in the communication between the board and the PC.
If someone encountered a similar problem or if you have a feeling of what might be the problem please share your thoughts.
Thank you.