I took Richard's advice and borrowed an old laptop with a seriel port.

Thee OOPic II now works fine. I have not done anything different so I
assume that it did not like the USB/Serial cables I used on my new Laptop.

Luckily, I can keep the old laptop, so I am working through all the training
excercises I can find. I hope this will improve my electronics/programming
skills, as I know that they are few! I am sure that this is why I have had
problems working through all the possible fixes that were offered, when I was
trying to use a USB connection for my OOpic.

I have been offered an OOpic AI.5 on it,s CPB board. I have noticed that
the voltage connection says 6v to 15v. Does this mean that I can power a robot
that uses, say 9.6v?

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Lisa

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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--- In o...@yahoogroups.com, lisamcthingy@... wrote:
>
> I took Richard's advice and borrowed an old laptop with a seriel
port.
>
> Thee OOPic II now works fine. I have not done anything different
so I
> assume that it did not like the USB/Serial cables I used on my new
Laptop.
>
> Luckily, I can keep the old laptop, so I am working through all
the training
> excercises I can find. I hope this will improve my
electronics/programming
> skills, as I know that they are few! I am sure that this is why I
have had
> problems working through all the possible fixes that were offered,
when I was
> trying to use a USB connection for my OOpic.
>
> I have been offered an OOpic AI.5 on it,s CPB board. I have
noticed that
> the voltage connection says 6v to 15v. Does this mean that I can
power a robot
> that uses, say 9.6v?
>
> Thanks again for everyone's help.
>
> Lisa

The OOPic R board (for example) doesn't use real RS232 level
changers. They take a shortcut and provide only 0V & 5V levels.
This will work with a PC serial port and, like many other
controllers, the design takes the cheap way out.

The problem is, some USB cables really care about the voltage levels
and, while I don't know specifically what levels are acceptable to
any given cable, I do know that the OOPic R doesn't work with all of
them.

Personally, I prefer the S board because it doesn't even try to do
level shifting. If I want RS232 levels, I have to do it myself with
some kind of level changer like the Pololu
http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/126 That's ok, at least it
will work with every USB cable I have tested (which, oddly enough,
are all from the same manufacturer. Of course they all work the
same!).

The reason I prefer the Pololu device is that it works from 5V logic
and 3.3V logic and I tend to bounce around a lot. I can use it on
the OOPic S as well as with my ARM, AVR and FPGA projects.

The only other issue with USB cables is assigning them to a COM port
that is in range for the IDE. With version 5, this means the COM
port must be in COM1 .. COM4. A couple of minutes with Device
Manager will solve that.

Congratulations on getting things working!

Richard



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