Troubleshooting SSC32

Lynxmotion Electronics & Software
1

Hello,

My SSC32 just arrived, and while I have a lot I’d like to do with it, I’ve now spent 2 nights unable to get it working with my computer.

I have the board connected to my PC (Vista) via a USB to serial adapter (Prolific driver installed). I have a single servo hooked up to 0.

For power, I’ve tried configurations of a 6V wall wart to VS1 (with the VL=VS1 jumper in place), removing the jumper and powering VL with a separate 9 volt battery, and now removing my single servo and just powering VL with a 9 volt battery.

What I see:

  • When I apply power to the board, the green light comes on
  • When I start LynxTerm, as expected the green light goes off
  • When I click anything in LynxTerm (e.g. All=1500 or All=0) the green light flashes (as expected). The servo, when attached, never responded (though did move a bit on power up).
  • When I go to the “Timeouts” dialog and try the “ver” test, the green light flashes. I never read any bytes however
  • When I click “Reg” I get a message “Can’t find SSC-32 card”

I feared my cable was bad, but I was able to hook up an old X10 firecracker and control it correctly (monitoring it via a serial port sniffer).

I’ve fiddled with every option I could, and tried following the advice in various threads, all with no luck.

Does anyone have any advice on what I can do to troubleshoot the problem? Anyone else ever experience anything like this? AM I overlooking something obvious?

Thanks for any help you can provide!
Mike

2

If the LED is going out and blinking as you say, then the software is talking to the correct port. Check to see that the baud rate jumpers are both installed for 115.2kbaud. Also check the program your using to make sure it’s at the same baud rate. Although the LED going out and blinking is an indication that the SSC-32 is receiving data, it does not mean the data is at the correct baud rate. All jumpers are vertically orientated (when you can read SSC-32 on the card) so double check that…

3

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the reply and apologies for the delayed response. I didn’t get a chance to look at things again until tonight. I triple checked my baud settings: both jumpers are in and correctly oriented, LynxTerm is set to 115200, and I also set the port to 115200 using Windows device manager.

Still no luck :frowning: I also played with the FIFO buffer sliders, as suggested in the thread “Serial Port Configuration Must Be Like This!,” but had no success there either.

The light continues to blink on sending commands, but the version never comes back, and the servo never responds when the appropriate commands are set.

Any other things to try?

4

different serial cable, different PC, stuff to decrease probability of the problem being something other than the ssc-32.

5

Get a female DB9 connector at Radio Shack and connect the rx and tx pins. Then connect to the USB cable and see if the bytes can be sent and recieved.