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Messages - LukeZ
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106
« on: November 14, 2021, 02:00:50 PM »
If you follow the schematic and Bill of Materials and succeed in getting everything soldered/reflowed correctly you will be fine. There is no common problem, but you need a lot of experience with this kind of surface mount assembly and most people have not done it before. I ruined many boards myself before I got good enough and those were very expensive lessons! Also if your board doesn't work it is very hard for me to help you troubleshoot since there are so many things that could have gone wrong during assembly that I will not know about it. Therefore I generally discourage people from trying this, but I won't say absolutely don't do it.
107
« on: November 08, 2021, 03:07:12 PM »
You're off to a good start! Keep us updated on your progress. I don't know what you plan for the TCB. I usually don't recommend people trying to assemble their own, even though of course the design is freely available, but it is not a simple process and I don't want people to become frustrated when their board doesn't work. Also right now it is very difficult to get certain necessary components due to the global chip shortage. However if you can find an Arduino-compatible Mega board then you can get quite a few features working without too much extra work. This thread is the place to start reading about that: Testing TCB Firmware with Stock Arduino MegaAlso if you are able to upload your pictures in JPG format that would be better than PDF!
108
« on: October 25, 2021, 07:41:19 AM »
No, there is no alternative. There are other form-factors of the same chip (for example ball-grid-arrays) but they will not be compatible with this board design.
I am sure you have heard of the global chip shortage that has affected many industries... this is it. Someday theoretically it should clear up, but when that will be I can't say.
I do see there are still Chinese sellers on eBay and probably AliExpress and other similar sites selling individual chips. You take your chances with those but it's the only avenue I see open right now.
109
« on: September 29, 2021, 08:40:47 PM »
I have no news to announce on that front presently.
110
« on: September 27, 2021, 03:26:50 PM »
Hi Paul, unfortunately I don't think you will be able to use this module with the TCB. Theoretically it is possible, by hacking into the control lines that connect to the onboard motor drivers, but you would also have to modify the firmware. It would be a big job that is not worth it the effort.
I'd recommend getting an ESC with sufficient current capacity, there are many available that will provide more than 40 amps. You could try the XCar 45A ESCs mentioned in the Wiki which are very cheap and good for up to 40 amps. Or for a lot more money you could use the Sabertooth 2x32 (32 amps) or Sabertooth 2x60 (60 amps). Armortek uses these on their 1/6th scale tanks so I'm sure they will be powerful enough for your model, and they work with the TCB.
111
« on: September 20, 2021, 04:55:41 PM »
Well the Arduino test is fairly simple, it's the same thing as what you're doing now flashing the bootloader to the TCB. Only difference is you don't have to use a batch file, just an option menu in the Arduino IDE. But if you don't have an Arduino lying around I understand, and it won't ultimately solve our problem anyway, it will just confirm that the USBASP is working.
Which I agree if you can get the drivers loaded for it, it seems likely that it does work. Also you raise a good point, the fact that AVRDUDE isn't giving us any message related to the USBASP would seem to indicate it is not the problem (the "target isn't responding" error refers to the TCB, but it is a very vague error and doesn't give us any specifics. You can Google this error and get all kinds of potential things to check if you want.)
Since we know your fabrication house already made one obvious mistake, we are left to wonder if there were others less obvious.
At this point I admit I am somewhat stuck. I am travelling this week, and then next week I am moving house, so I won't have a lot of time in the immediate future to do much. But as time allows I will try to ponder any other troubleshooting ideas we might be able to try.
112
« on: September 15, 2021, 01:35:52 PM »
Hi Chi-el, sorry you're having all these problems, and sorry also for the slow reply.
At this point we are back to the basics. First of all, make doubly sure that you are connecting the ISP cable to the board correctly. You might take a photo of the orientation you've been using so I can double check.
You could also try buying a different USBASP (maybe yours is defective).
If you have an off-the shelf Arduino board lying around, you could also try using the USBASP to put a bootloader on that. Open the Arduino IDE, in the Tools menu select your Arduino Board type to match whatever kind of Arduino you have, under Programmer select USBASP, and then select Burn Bootloader (Arduino already knows the stock bootloaders for all boards). Of course your off-the-shelf Arduino will already have a bootloader on it, you'll just be overwriting it with the same thing, but if this works it would tell us your USBASP is functioning, which might lead us to think there is still something wrong with your TCB boards.
113
« on: September 09, 2021, 10:02:21 AM »
Yes that is correct. In fact they are not exactly square, they are slightly rectangular, so you do need to place it so that it matches the footprint lengthwise. But other than that it doesn't matter which end is which.
114
« on: September 06, 2021, 12:10:14 AM »
Hi Chi-el, thanks for the photos - I definitely do see a problem: they appear to have forgotten to install the crystal. Without that the processor will definitely not work. This is part XT1, I've highlighted it in the attached picture. I just checked the BOM and it looks like the original crystal is no longer available, maybe that is why they didn't install it (still they should have told you). At least at DigiKey in the US it looks like the replacement is ABM8G-16.000MHZ-18-D2Y-T3. I don't know if you'll be able to source this in Europe but I think DigiKey should ship to you, though I don't know how expensive it will be or how long it will take. There may be other substitutes that would work as well. I'm travelling right now and don't have a lot of time, I'll be back home the middle of next week and if you haven't been able to source a part I will do some more searching then. This part is SMD with the solder pads on the underneath side of the chip, so it would have been a lot easier to install it during manufacturing. But from your picture I can see there is solder on all the pads already and you might be able to get it on by hand with a soldering iron, or with a heat gun if you have one of those (but be careful with the heat gun because it is easy to re-melt other parts and blow them away). You asked about the FTDI Friend, we now know what the problem is but I wanted to answer that question anyway. The FTDI Friend is similar to the USB port on the board, in both cases they connect to a serial port on the Mega processor. We use these serial ports to easily load firmware and read information from the chip. The problem is, when the chip is brand new it doesn't know how to do anything at all - the serial ports aren't even enabled and it doesn't matter what information we send over serial, the chip isn't listening. The bootloader is a small program that gives it the basic functionality of communication. Because we can't yet use serial, this very first small program can only be loaded through the ISP port which is specially designed for this purpose. So for this first step we must use something like the USBASP. After we get the bootloader on (which we leave on forever and never delete), we can then communicate over serial (via USB or the FTDI Friend), and that is much easier and we can tell the chip to do whatever we want, load different programs, whatever. Anyway, the crystal is necessary before anything can be done, so I have high hopes that if you can install that you will find the remaining steps will work as expected.
115
« on: September 04, 2021, 10:08:51 AM »
You're right, the USB cable should provide enough power, but since you are having issues I would recommend disconnecting the USB and giving it power with a battery through the main power connector.
116
« on: September 03, 2021, 04:40:05 PM »
Also, some USBASP devices have a switch to run at 3.3 volts or 5 volts, if this is the case with yours make sure it is set to 5 volts.
117
« on: September 03, 2021, 04:26:43 PM »
Did you apply power to the TCB while you tried to flash the bootloader? The board will not be powered through the ISP port so you need to have a battery connected while you do this.
Later when you load firmware the board can be powered through the USB port, so the battery is not necessary for that step. But for the bootloader it does need power.
118
« on: September 01, 2021, 05:28:41 PM »
Hi Chi-el, Sorry for the slow reply. I think the problem is almost certainly that the processor needs the bootloader installed first. When the board was under production we did this at the factory, but if you are assembling one from scratch then you have to do it yourself. If you buy an Arduino Mega the bootloader already comes installed, but when using a new chip it is blank. The bootloader only has to be installed once on each board, after that you will not need to do it again. I've attached instructions for how to do this, you will need to buy a USBASP device. They are very cheap, here is one from China but you can probably find European sellers on eBay who have them. Notice the one I linked to gives you the option of buying an 8-pin to 6-pin adapter, you will need this version because we use a 6-pin ISP port on the TCB. Most places sell them with the adapter included. In the instructions I discuss a pogo adapter, you won't need this because your boards already have pins installed on the ISP port, so you can just plug in the 6-pin cable from the USBASP directly into your board. The instructions also mention using an FTDI adapter to load the firmware. You can ignore this and just your USB cable to load the firmware as normal. The FTDI adapter is faster when we are flashing hundreds of boards, but you only have to do two of them so it's no problem. I hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions! EDIT: No, it doesn't make a difference what position the fight/repair switch is in.
119
« on: August 31, 2021, 02:14:28 PM »
Impressive build! I'm curious what service you used to have the boards manufactured? Let us know how they work!
120
« on: August 26, 2021, 11:46:01 AM »
Luke your option to use on and off commands for the smoker and light doesn’t work as when you switch to position 2 middle position the smoker or light then turn off, that’s why toggle works. I understand what you're saying. In order to use position 3 for some other purpose without affecting the smoker, we have to use the toggle functions on position 1 and leave position 2 clear. It also makes sense that when you put both the smoker and light toggle functions on the same trigger, it works but they are not synchronized. This is because at startup the light is initialized to Off, and the smoker is initialized to Enabled. So if you toggle them both at the same time, they go in the opposite direction of each other. Since you want the light to work with the smoker, there is an unorthodox way you could accomplish this. In OP Config on the Motors tab, set the Smoker Type to "Separate Heat & Fan." However, do not actually separate the heating element and the fan control on your smoker, keep them both plugged into the Smoker output on the TCB. Connect your LED to the Aux output on the TCB. In OP Config, the Fan speeds will control the Aux output, and the Heat percentage will control the Smoker output. Set the Fan speed to 100% for all three positions (Idle, Fast Idle, and Max). This will turn your light on whenever the smoker is on. Under the Heat percentages you can set the speed that you want your smoker to run at for each position. See the attached image. Is there any info on the rotary switch you need for the benedini, as Thomas no longer sells them. FrSky has one. Here is a link to buy them in the US, and another to buy them in the UK. Glad you experimented with the turret stick switches. They are not ideal, but when your transmitter is limited in channels it really the only way to get more control.
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