The USB port broke off of my board is the any warranty or way I can fix it?
Thanks
Matt
Hi,
If you can send and receive with the serial monitor, then there’s some potential. It might be that the Arduino requires a specific rate for programming, and the 3.3volt rise-drop timings aren’t good at that rate… It might also be the timing of the reset button… It’s hard to tell.
If wanted to try something else besides getting a new FTDI cable at 5 volts, we do have this logic level converter which should work, but it’s hard to be sure about the specifics when there’s no working solution to compare it to.
Hope this helps,
Hi,
Yes, that cable should work.
If you do choose to order a replacement PCB, please submit a ticket at robotshop.helpserve.com/ and we will prepare a quote for you.
Thanks for choosing RobotShop,
Hi,
Are you sure that your cable is the 3.3 volt variant and not the 5 volt variant? We’re not sure if the 3.3 volt cable will work with the rover… We know that you definitively won’t be able to connect the Vcc line or power the rover from USB…
You’d have to release the reset switch just after the Arduino sketch was finished compiling just as it starts uploading. I usually press the reset button at the same time I start the compilation, and release it as soon as I see the line “Binary sketch size: … bytes”.
It usually takes a bit of trial-and-error the first few times to get the timing correct: if the timing is wrong, you’ll see the usual “avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00” lines show up.
Hope this helps,
Hello,
If you already have a USB-to-serial adapter, we would recommend getting a product such as the Droids SAS Serial Adapter RS232-TTL to convert the RS232 serial voltage levels to TTL levels:
Otherwise, you can get the FTDI USB-to-TTL (Serial) Cable 5V which gives you the TTL levels directly:
In either case, you will want to connect the adapter or cable’s input RX pin to the digital 1 (TX) pin of the DFRobotShop Rover, connect the adapter/cable’s output TX pin to the digital 0 (RX) pin of the rover, and connect the ground pin of the adapter/cable to one of the ground pins of the rover.
Once you have this connected, you will be able to communicate with the Arduino. In order to upload a sketch, you will need press the reset button on the rover because the auto-reset feature will not work anymore.
Hope this helps,
Yes, it is definitely the 3.3 V version. I use it for my Xbees. I have not had much luck with it directly connected to the rover. I can use the serial monitor, but it has not been able to upload a new sketch.
I have been trying for about a week. All I ever get on the upload is:
“avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00”
I even tried tweaking the baud rate in the boards.txt file to change from the 56700 default to : 9600, 19200, 38400, 115200 … but no luck.
OK, that is great info … I will probably try the: robotshop.com/ftdi-usb-to-ttl-serial-cable-5v-6.html if you tink that will work.
I may also go the route of replacing the rover PCB … I don’t know how to order that here. Mine is the V1.5 rover. I guess I can use a newer version of PCB is there are no 1.5 available.
I will try the cable first and the PCB if the cable does not work well enough for me long-term.
Just happened to break my USB off accidentally yesterday. I have had mine for a few years … so I am really going to need to go for the USB to Serial solution. I don’t understand how I need to pin the serial to the rover to program. Can you give me any hints?
I have this cable: robotshop.com/productinfo.aspx?pc=RB-Spa-432&lang=en-US
This is perfect info. At what point do I press the reset switch?
We gather you mean the USB port on the DFRobotShop Rover? Yes, this is covered by the warranty (so long as it’s not too old). Please send a ticket to the Support Center (exchanges dept) with either your order number or invoice number and a brief description of the issue. If it’s still under warranty, they will exchange the board (no the entire robot). If you are outside the warranty period, you will need a USB to serial adapter to be able to program it, or find a way of soldering it back.