trouble with roboclaw 2/7A

[deweyjose]

Hi, having trouble with the roboclaw 2/7A controller.

I've tried standard and packet serial with the raspberry pi and have not been able to get the motors to turn.

Not sure what else to do... Any advice?

[Basicmicro Support]

We will need more detailed information on what you actually tested(did you write it from scratch, did you use one of our libraries, what mode were you using, how was the board powered, what were the motors used etc...).

If the board has old firmware and it has a USB connection, you need to update the firmware before any of the current examples/libraries will function correctly.

If the unit is a very old 2x5A without a USB connection then you need to send the board in to get the firwmare updated, to be compatible with the latest libraries.

[deweyjose]

Apologies, I mistyped, it's the 2/7A.

The roboclaw was powered by it's own source 4AA batteries.

Using a raspberry pi I've tried standard serial with the wiringPi serial library.

I've also tried the roboclaw python library with no success. It even fails to get the version.

The motors are 140 RPM Gearmotors
Suggested Voltage: 4.5VDC
No Load Speed: 140RPM
No Load Current: 190mA
Max. Load Current: 250mA
Torque: 800 gf-cm (11.11 oz-in)

Can I update the firmware via a USB connection a linux host or does it have to be a windows host using the usb driver?

[deweyjose]

Also, I've installed the roboclaw windows driver and IonMotion. I have the roboclaw connected to the usb port but it's not showing up in device manager. The power led is blinking 4 times now.

I also have a mac, when I look at the usb devices I see this:
USB Roboclaw 2x7A:

Product ID: 0x2404
Vendor ID: 0x03eb (Atmel Corporation)
Version: 1.00
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Location ID: 0x14100000 / 27
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 100

[deweyjose]

Ok made more progress...I think I had the wrong baud rate set.

I was able to get the version command to work with the python library as well as some of the other read apis. However I still can't get the motors to move.

import time
import roboclaw

#Linux comport name
roboclaw.Open("/dev/ttyAMA0",115200)

address = 0x80

version = roboclaw.ReadVersion(address)
if version[0]==False:
print "GETVERSION Failed"
else:
print repr(version[1])

print roboclaw.ReadMinMaxMainVoltages(address)
print roboclaw.ReadMinMaxLogicVoltages(address)
print roboclaw.ReadM1MaxCurrent(address)
print roboclaw.ReadM2MaxCurrent(address)
print roboclaw.ReadTemp(address)
print roboclaw.ReadTemp2(address)
print roboclaw.ReadSpeedM1(address)
print roboclaw.ReadSpeedM2(address)

roboclaw.ForwardMixed(address, 0)
time.sleep(3)
roboclaw.ForwardMixed(address, 64)
time.sleep(3)
roboclaw.ForwardMixed(address, 127)
time.sleep(3)
roboclaw.ForwardMixed(address, 0)

[deweyjose]

Ok, even more progress. It looks like the main battery supply min voltage was set to 18v. I've been able to lower it to 6v with roboclaw.py. I think this was my issue all along and misunderstood that setting min voltage on the controller itself was not doing what I thought it was.

The output from roboclaw python APIs was enlightening.

[deweyjose]

It's alive!!!!

Everything is working now. It was simply a voltage issue.

[Basicmicro Support]

Great. Let us know if you need anything else, not that we had to do anything since you diagnosed and debugged it yourself.