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[michelb]

Today I finished building the board en tried to connect it to een Win7 PC.

First I connected the 12V, the power LED becomes solid red.
Then I connected the USB cable, at the PC wouldn't recognize the device, so I installed the driver as mentioned in the tutorial "Using the configuration utility".
It installed the driver, but the device manager reports an exclamation for the "AstroEQ mount Controller (COM3)."
Switching off the power and removing the USB connection for ten seconds and trying again has no result.

Once the USB LED was flasing, then I tried to run the configuration utility and uploaded the firmware, but still the computer won't reconize it. I can choose COM1 and COM4, but not COM3 and that where the device manager says the controller is.

Looking at the controller at the moment, POWER and STATUS are lid, USB flashes and I cannot find the meaning of the LEDs.

Please help.

[TCWORLD]

In device manager if you double click on the device, it should give you a message to say why there is an exclamation mark. What does that say?

[michelb]

It says "Device will not start (code 10)"

Today, ik tried to connect the controller to my astro laptop. At first I got the same result, but when I looked in the device manager there was a second AstroEQ serial port but without the driver. See the first picture. I selected that serialport and installed the driver (happened automatic) and that port started without an error. See the next attached pic.
Using that port the USB LED flashes rapidly, but when I started the config utility it still couldn't make a connection to the controller (See the same pic.)
Last question I have for now, when I start the Config utility I do not get a button start as shown in the tutorial. See the last pic.

[TCWORLD]

I wonder if at any point you've had another device with an PIC18F14K50 in it as that will end up with the same PID/VID combination (the default microchip ones) and so you may have had an old version of the microchip driver installed - hence two devices appearing.

But now that it is installed it seems that the new issue is that it is not loaded properly - if the light is blinking very rapidly (about 4+Hz) then it hasn't properly connected. I would suggest you uninstall the AstroEQ device(s) in device manager making sure to select the box to delete driver software. Then unplug the AstroEQ and reconnect it (also make sure you plug in the power cable before the USB cable to AstroEQ). Try reinstalling the driver and see if it starts behaving.


Regarding the config utility, I need to update the tutorial. I made some changes to separate the firmware upload from the configuration so that changes to the configuration/mount setup didn't require the firmware to be uploaded over and over again. The instructions are mostly the same. Selecting 'Upload Firmware' is equivalent to the 'Start' button. The 'Configure' button can be used if you don't need to change the firmware (no new versions since last time), but do want to change the mount configuration.

[michelb]

Oké, tonight I've been trying again and in the device manager I haven't changed a thing, but on both computers I've tried the AstroEQ controller with everything looks as if it works. De AstroEQ serial port has disappeared but a generic serial port has appeared and thats the right port to use.

So everything looks as if it will work, next step it connecting the steppers.

Thank you for the support and explanation, I'll return when I've connected and tried the steppers.

[michelb]

The solution was simple, remove the driver as you described, reconnect and reinstall and everything was as it is supposed to be.

Next thing was setting the current limit, I tried both methods, but turning the potentiometer (left or right, big or small turn) has no effect on the voltage at the measuring point, with or without stepper motor, the voltage remains the same.
And as expected the stepper gets warm after a while.

Any idea?