- Thu Feb 07, 2008 7:38 pm
#42460
Ive been working on a project where Ill be driving say 30 or 40 unipolar stepper motors with the most minimal circuit I could imagine. Heres the first completed and fully working board:
Its basically a surface mount PICAXE08M (<- S.F. should really carry these), AKA a bootloaded 12F675, connected to a ULN2003 darlington array, with some 1k resistors and fancy wiring so 2 pins control the 4 coils of the motor, and a big 5w 5ohm current limit resistor going to the stepper. (Yes it does get hot but thats to be expected and it works anyway.)
My big hurdle was how to program the chips without an ICSP of one flavor or another. (I was being stingy on board real estate.) I decided to build a small 'programmer' for just the chip using the FTDI232R and a flip top burn in socket for SOIC08 chips. See here:
Flip the socket open and you see the little micro hiding inside...
Problem is it doesnt work and this is where I need some help. I based the entire thing off of the Sparkfun tutorial on eagle layout using the FTDI232R as an example....
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/presen ... 9-EaglePCB
Here is my version of the schematic:
The only changes I made to the Sparkfun design was to add a power LED off of the 3.3v out of the FTDI chip (mainly as a 'health' indicator) and I built in the 2 resistors that are required by the PICAXE for the serial programming. Here is their required circuit designed to plug into a serial cable of one form or another:
With me so far? When connected to the pc, the board powers up (I get my green light), the drivers installed the first time as usual, it assigns a com number and AFA the pc is concerned (windows vista) the com port is there and functioning as normal. But when I try the Programming Editor it sees the com port but will not download a program.
I have used my DMM to track down everything on the board and nothing AFAIK is shorted or doesnt connect to anything. I have verified that I get +5v at pin1 of the chip and GND at pin 8. What should be the TX pin of the FTDI chip is connected to the Serial In (pin2) of the PICAXE and the RX pin is connected to the Serial Out (pin7) of the PICAXE.
I must have totally spaced on something or another because I just cant figure out what I did wrong. Was the Sparkfun example correct and working? (I know not the first time but I made sure to connect my ground.) Is there something else I should have done or needed to get this thing to work? Any other thoughts or comments?
Thanks in advance for the time to look this over for me.
Brian
BTW, this is my first batch of boards directly through Gold Phoenix and I must say, with the help of Julian Bleeker's blog tutorial, the process was quick, painless, and Im wonderfully happy. Total turnaround in 7 days including weekends.
Its basically a surface mount PICAXE08M (<- S.F. should really carry these), AKA a bootloaded 12F675, connected to a ULN2003 darlington array, with some 1k resistors and fancy wiring so 2 pins control the 4 coils of the motor, and a big 5w 5ohm current limit resistor going to the stepper. (Yes it does get hot but thats to be expected and it works anyway.)
My big hurdle was how to program the chips without an ICSP of one flavor or another. (I was being stingy on board real estate.) I decided to build a small 'programmer' for just the chip using the FTDI232R and a flip top burn in socket for SOIC08 chips. See here:
Flip the socket open and you see the little micro hiding inside...
Problem is it doesnt work and this is where I need some help. I based the entire thing off of the Sparkfun tutorial on eagle layout using the FTDI232R as an example....
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/presen ... 9-EaglePCB
Here is my version of the schematic:
The only changes I made to the Sparkfun design was to add a power LED off of the 3.3v out of the FTDI chip (mainly as a 'health' indicator) and I built in the 2 resistors that are required by the PICAXE for the serial programming. Here is their required circuit designed to plug into a serial cable of one form or another:
With me so far? When connected to the pc, the board powers up (I get my green light), the drivers installed the first time as usual, it assigns a com number and AFA the pc is concerned (windows vista) the com port is there and functioning as normal. But when I try the Programming Editor it sees the com port but will not download a program.
I have used my DMM to track down everything on the board and nothing AFAIK is shorted or doesnt connect to anything. I have verified that I get +5v at pin1 of the chip and GND at pin 8. What should be the TX pin of the FTDI chip is connected to the Serial In (pin2) of the PICAXE and the RX pin is connected to the Serial Out (pin7) of the PICAXE.
I must have totally spaced on something or another because I just cant figure out what I did wrong. Was the Sparkfun example correct and working? (I know not the first time but I made sure to connect my ground.) Is there something else I should have done or needed to get this thing to work? Any other thoughts or comments?
Thanks in advance for the time to look this over for me.
Brian
BTW, this is my first batch of boards directly through Gold Phoenix and I must say, with the help of Julian Bleeker's blog tutorial, the process was quick, painless, and Im wonderfully happy. Total turnaround in 7 days including weekends.