I recently pulled out my programming kit and found that the usb-serial kit that came with it and the cable from the interface device were missing.
I purchased a usb-serial adapter and assigned it to com3, I also made a 6 wire straight cable, and a 6 wire rollover cable.
using the usb adapter connected to interface connected to 6 wire straight cable i can get controller verification, but can not download the master code. I get the “make sure the power is on and the serial cable connected” message.
The little orange box contains a voltage level-shifter to convert the microcontroller’s 5 Volt signals to/from the USB-to-serial cable’s 12 Volt signals.
Your simple cables don’t do the voltage conversions. I hope you didn’t ruin the microcontroller’s interface circuits.
The little box also does just a little bit of signal clean-up and or signal generation because many USB-to-Serial cables corrupt the timing of the signals they convert.
right, and I knew that, I never directly connected anything to my controller, the orange box was always in the loop.
what i have is a usb-serial adapter coming out of my pc into the orange box then to a straight 6 wire cable into the controller.
using the easyC program, under the downloads screen if i click controller verification it comes back and tells me i have a vex connected, if i turn the vex off it no longer sees anything connected, so i know I’m close.
I believe the issue is in my straight cable, im not convinced it is supposed to be straight, but I dont know.
thank you for the assist. I have searched this site and Ihave fouond the pinouts for different items, but nothing to state exactly what kind of cable this is.
is it a straight cable wire for wire on both sides?
a standard phone cable is not a straight cable, its generally a ‘roll over’ cable, but more importantly to this project, a standard phone cable is usually a 4 pin cable.
the cable needed is a 6 wire cable, a rj-11 (vs. ethernet which is rj-45 (8 wire)). I work in the telco - IT field, I make cables every day, have my own crimping tools, etc. I just need to know what kind of cable this is, because a roll over cable did not work at all, and a straight cable only gave me controller verification so far, and would not let me download the master file.
in the morning I am going to simply try swapping rx and tx wires on one side of the cable to see if thats my issue. I hope someone spots this post and can tell me what cable they have.
What i need to know most is if the wires are the same on both sides?
I did not investigate, the wiring of the connectors… I just went to some inexpensive store and bought a “Phone Cord”.
I am away from home, so I can’t ohm out the cable or do other investigation for you - Sorry about that - We are working off of my recollections from about 9 months ago.
after some more researching on this site I think my problem is more related to the pgrm status light, which is not turning on, but once and awhile starts blinking once every 5-10 seconds. I havent figured out the what and why of that yet.
I don’t know if you know this but pressing the orange button on the serial adapter is supposed to send the robot in “program mode”, when it’s in this mode I believe the green light is blinking. When the robot is executing code I believe the green light is solid.