USB Cord/Robot Brain port issues

VEX IQ General Discussion
1

My students are having trouble (this year) downloading their programs from their Chromebooks to their Vex IQ brains. The issue is the USB cable in the brain usb port. We need to jiggle the cords and hold them at odd angles in order for the brain to be recognized and programs downloaded. I’m worried this will compromise the port on the robot brain.

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I was having problems downloading to the brain as well, and mine was fixed by synching the controller to the brain, then attaching the controller to my laptop with the usb cable. After this it was able to be recognized and the program was able to be downloaded.

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Thanks for the suggestion. Gave it a try…no luck. We have switched out the USB cables and had some success. But, I’d guess about 25% of my robots are having the issue.

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This is a known and very common issue with V5 brains. See this topic for a bit of context. The micro USB ports on the brain wear out very quickly through normal use. To my knowledge, the only way to fox the ports is to RMA the brain. If you do so and continue how you were using the ports as you were, the ports will just break again.
I would recommend buying magnetic cables as I described in the above linked topic or micro USB to USB A adapters as others described.

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Thank you very much! Vex has reached out and will be sending new USB cables. I def will be purchasing the magnetic cables.

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Another thing to note, to download code, you do not need to connect the USB cable to the brain. Instead, you can connect it to the controller. When you do this, the icons for both the brain and controller should turn green and then you can download code as usual. This is true for V5, not IQ.

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Is this possible for VEX IQ with a Chromebook ? I unable to locate an icon for the controller.

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That’s V5 (and soon IQ gen 2 and EXP) only. IQ gen 1 does not support download via controller.

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I guess my dreams of wireless downloading in the future…are over. LOL

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