servo/#/active 1 crash on 2.0

hi

this is a follow-up to issues raised by christian blom on this forum last week - i am working with him on the same project.

we had some issues with servos, and that led to the discovery of a forgotten jumper-pin on the 2.0 boards.

after fixing this it seemed, to work fine - that is, just controlling one single servo.....

however - this was on a board with the software it was shipped with  - 1.6.1 or 1.6.0 i do not remember

when we tried to do the same on the boards on which we had already uploaded heavy2 1.6.1  it just did not work any more,

that is  - sending servo/#/active 1 crashed the board again, in the same fashion as before we fixed the forgotten jumper-pin.

the same goes for the very last version heavy2 1.6.2.

the message - and hence servo-motors - works on 2.0 boards with 1.6.0 software but it seems that this introduces

just so many other problems with other things that it is beyond the scope of this mail to list them up.

so could you plz. try to activate and run a servo on a 2.0 board running heavy2 1.6.x and tell me what you find?

we are communicating with the board from max/msp on a mac-book pro running leopard via ethernet.

we are in big trouble because of this and we sincerely hope the beta-testing period on the 2.0 boards 

is soon to come to an end

kind regards from norway

håkon lindbäck

Hi - I'm able to connect a servo with those firmware versions and control it successfully via Ethernet.  

If it's crashing the board, that sounds like it could be a power supply issue.  How big a load are you driving?  What kind of power supply are you using?  If you need more juice, you can use the big 2-position connector near the servos to connect an external power supply.

hi liam, there just must be some issue here -

we got ten 2.0 cards, all from the same (first?) batch. today, i compleatly erased four of them and uploaded  the  last heavy2.0 1.6.2.  i then connected to each one of them via max/msp  - usb, and i managed to activate and control a servo* on all theese cards. (going through all the four servo ports on all the four cards i discovered that SRV1 on two of the cards did not work. i think this is another issue, but is there any way to troubleshoot that?)

now - after this modest success, i switched to ethernet. i use a standard switchable 220 to 3-12 V regulated powersupply and i feed the cards with 6 V. i just can't see how this could be related to my problem here since we're only dealing with one single servo without any load. very well -  all works fine, appleds, analogin, motors u name it, but servo/#/active 1 makes all the cards crash immediatley. and that is without any load, without any other device attached -  that is on a card fresh the factory.

what could possibly be going on here - it is driving us crazy!

kind regards

håkon lindbäck

* we use this servo - http://www.parallax.com/StoreSearchResults/tabid/768/txtSearch/servo/List/0/SortField/4/ProductID/101/Default.aspx

ok - i have tested every possible configuration for controlling a servo over ethernet from max/msp on a 2.0 board with last firmware, separate external power included (with the approriate (missing) jumper settings) - and it all results are the same - the card crashes every time. even sending position without activating the port causes a crash.

nice weekend

regards

håkon lindbäck

ok - i have tested every possible configuration for controlling a servo over ethernet from max/msp on a 2.0 board with last firmware, separate external power included (with the approriate (missing) jumper settings) - and it all results are the same - the card crashes every time. even sending position without activating the port causes a crash.

nice weekend

regards

håkon lindbäck

Hm - sounds very strange.  Have you tried using them over USB?  What about with mchelper?

once again -

i can control a servo from mchelper  via usb
i can controll a servo from max/msp via usb

but - sending *any* servo-related  message to a board with heavy2.0 1.6.x installed over ethernet cases the board to crash,
that is: the green blinking led dies. so  - even if i try to send  /servo/0/position xxx before /servo/0/active 1 the card crashes.

all tests carried out with  one servo without any load attached and nothing else what so ever connected to the card - 

what u make of this???

kind regards

håkon

so, from my point of view, it jut seems to be beyond any doubt that there is

a problem with controlling servos from max/msp via ethernet on the 2.0

boards -  at least on mine.

how you make that work is just a mystery to me. could it be that my

boards are from another, earlier batch?

my boards  - ten of them  -  have serial numbers around 2433.

when you say u manage to control a servo over ethernet. is this card

from the same batch as ours??

could you plz check this out - we urgently need a working solution here, my mad boss is about to go mean....

håkon

Hello,

I have the same problem.

I can control a servo with Max via USB but it crash the board if I'm using the ethernet connection.

I'm using    heavy20_v1.7a2.bin

Any idea please?

regards

Fabrice

i have the same problem but with the steppers

This is a known bug.  We don't have a solid resolution for it just yet, but if you can rebuild heavy and turn off the USB interface - ie, don't start it up in Run() - then things should work ok.

Thanks Liam,

I'm looking for the source file to rebuild heavy20_v1.7a2.bin. Is it in your "trunk" folder?

Cheers

Actually, you should try building from /firmware/branches/1x_support.  Let us know how it goes!

Ok, I've rebuiled the firmware and the board is not crashing anymore.

The problem now is that I'm loosing the ethernet connection randomly and all digital output are switched on/off evry 30 second.....

Sounds like the board is rebooting, probably because of a crash.  If you're not using the USB system at all, it would probably best to comment it out in your config.h to make sure it's not being used anywhere.

i'm having the same problem and i already commented the usb part

I rebuilt the firmware with the USB sections commented out and still had this issue.  The only solution I have found is to cut open a usb cable and supply 5V from a battery or other power supply.

I confirm servo doesn't work with my MC2.0 & Board 2.0 (serial 2006). Whatever servo OSC command I send over ethernet, the MC crashes. The servos arepowered with an external power supply

I tried to rebuild the firmware disabling USB, but it didn't help (btw, in config.h setting APPBOARD_VERSION to 200 won't work as APPBOARD_VERSION = 200 is not recognized in servo.c).

As Chris wrote, supplying 5V to the USB connector seems to work... so far.

There are 4 things I want to do with my v2.0 board:

- changing IP -> doesn't work ;

- driving 4 servos -> doesn't work as expected ;

- turning on/off the 4 appleds -> LED 3 and LED4 are inverted ;

- driving 2 relays and 2 valves (with an external 12V power supply) -> this seems to work!

So, my v2.0 experience is rather bad so far (maybe I'll use my old v1 board for the installation I'm working on, it seems more reliable)...

I'd be interested to hear if the same setup works differently on v1 and v2 boards.  There's definitely something wrong going on in the servo system with regard to power, but to this point I had not gotten reports of it working differently on different board versions.  If it's possible to keep a USB cable connected for now, it seems like that's the best workaround.