TTL-232R Not working....

[hillels]

TTL-232R Not working....

by hillels » Sat Feb 28, 2009 4:24 pm

Ok gurus,

As a cheap quick alternative to the "wireless" solution, I thought it would be fun to try the "easier" approach and buy the $20 TTL-232R (5v variant) cable for a direct hookup with the Orion from a laptop. Normally I wouldn't do this because I'm horrible with a soldering iron, but because it's so much cheaper, I decided to order the cable anyway. Once the cable arrived, I looked at Claude's pictures for the mount side wiring, and I compared them to the data spec sheet for the cable at:

http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/DataSheets/Modules/DS_TTL-232R_CABLES_V201.pdf

Looks like the orange/yellow on the USB cable are the transmit/receive lines - so they need to be wired to 220 ohm resisters and then combined to the join with the black of the telephone 4-conductor cord that I found in my basement. The reds - VCC - should be joined from both the cable and telephone cord. And finally, it looks like the black on the USB cable (GRND) should be joined to the Yellow on the telephone cord according to Claude's picture. Still, I noticed that the yellow in Claude's picture looked like:

http://www.autopano.net/forum/showimage.php?pid=39798&filename=Cables-order.jpg

But my telephone cable had green and yellow swaped. So, I switched and hooked the black USB cable wire to the green telephone wire. The result was pretty horrid looking setup, but I thought I would give it a try.

I plugged in the TTL-232R and immediately vista recognized it and installed a COM8 port. I was getting excited. I plugged the telephone cord side into the Orion Hand Controller port and turned it on. I installed and started the papywizard. I configured it to used the right serial port by typing "COM8" in the serial port box. I clicked the "Connect" menu option and I get an Axis error.

After little success over the next 10 minutes with papywizard either erroring out or freezing. I decided to take out my trusty volt-meter and check the telephone cord sides voltage - for my setup the red/green (not red/yellow) wires. Sure enough, just a little over 5v registered. This is good. I also checked for continuity and resistance over the data lines (cable side) which are joined to the single black telephone wire. All looks good there too.

At this point, my expertise in electronics is COMPLETELY exhausted. Any ideas of why this might not work? Within a week I hope to get the "wireless" version going - but I would love to have a "wired" cord as a backup solution.

Thanks in advance,

-= Hillel =-

[Paul]

by Paul » Sat Feb 28, 2009 4:43 pm

just try to setup it in Papywizard config as "7" instead of "COM8"

and check if the vista-properties (devicemanager) are set to
- baudrate: 9600
- databits: 8
- parity: none
- stoppbits: 1
- flowcontrol: none

Last edited by Paul on Sat Feb 28, 2009 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Sat Feb 28, 2009 5:14 pm

Hi Hillel,


STOP .... STOP .... STOP....!

With the FTDI TTL-232R, you should NOT connect the VCC !!!

I come back with some comments !

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Sat Feb 28, 2009 5:52 pm

Hillel,

A first question, what is the type of FTDI you have buyed ?
Is that the FTDI TTL-232R-5V ? If yes, this is the right one !!!

The TTL-232R get is power supply from the USB connector (the PC or equivalent) who is between 4.75 and 5.25 volts (depending the PC) this power supply is much more lower than the one you get from the Merlin/Orion who is between 9 and 12 volts !!!
So this is the reason you could not mixt both 2 ... you can "burn" your USB port on the PC or the PC himselve !

For the usage of the FTDI with the Merlin/Orion you don't connect the VCC (V+) of the Merlin, you should connect the GROUND of the FTDI (BLACK-pin 1 on the 6 pin header of the FTDI) with the corresponding colour of the Merlin GROUND, normally YELLOW .... please have a look on my visual documents
http://www.autopano.net/forum/p39798-2009-02-26-19-21-54#p39798
Pictures 2 and 3 ...

You should also connect the TXD of the FTDI (ORANGE-pin 4 on the 6 pin header) with one of the resistors comming from the Merlin/Orion.

And, at the end, you should connect the RXD of the FTDI (YELLOW-pin 5 on the 6 pin header ) with the other resistor comming from the Merlin/Orion.

As Paul say, when you configure Papywizard for the Serial connection, you could use for instance "7" or "COM8" (in all letters" for your virtual serial port "COM8" on the PC ...)(Serial port "COM1" is "0", "COM2" is "1" etc ...)

Good luck, don't burn your PC !

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Sat Feb 28, 2009 6:00 pm

Hillel,

If I have some more time, I will test and confirm the FTDI solution and will update the "solution" document:
http://www.autopano.fr/wiki/images-fr/e/e2/Merlin_Interface_study.pdf

[hillels]

by hillels » Sat Feb 28, 2009 8:27 pm

Hey guys,

Wow... that's a lot of info to digest. The general consensus seemed to be that I didn't need VCC to be hooked up. I already had Tx/Rx hooked up with the resistors, and I already had the TTL's black wire hooked up to ground on the Orion. So basically, I just cut the bad soldering job I did on the red-VCC wire hookup. I plugged both ends back into both the computer and Orion. I heard Vista immediately accept and register the TTL cable on COM8 again. I fired up papywizard and pressed connect.

Immediately it worked! The connection succeeded. I panned the Orion around using the GUI and set the starting and ending positions. I pressed the shoot button, and the Orion began to swivel and pause at various positions and take shots. I need to play around with the software some more to get more familiar with it.

As if this wasn't good enough, Claude's professionally made cable to work with the Parallax board just came in the mail today! I'm still waiting on the board which should come early next week. Thanks Claude for all your hard work!

So I can confirm that the TTL-232R does work with only three USB cable wires hooked up - yellow/orange with the resistors, and the black ground wire. The USB on the PC was not fried thank g-d,

Thanks everyone,

-= Hillel =-

P.S. In the poorly soldered picture below, I hooked up to green instead of yellow because my telephone cable had the green and yellow switched from Claude's

Last edited by hillels on Sun Mar 01, 2009 12:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Sun Mar 01, 2009 12:20 am

That's fine Hillel,

So the "FTDI TTL-232R-5V" seems to become a "proved" cheap solution for people who are happy with a "wired connection" between the Merlin/Orion/Sky-Watcher and a PC, Mac, etc... or as a "replacement" solution when not in the field !

I will update the document in this way !

Thank you Hillel for trying this solutiona nd sharing your experience with us

[hillels]

by hillels » Sun Mar 01, 2009 3:34 am

Claude,

Yeah, I just wanted the wired cable as a backup solution. The cable is only $20 and with shipping, it came to only $23 in the US. There will also be a time in the future on a trip when my Nokia 770 fails, or it runs out of batteries, or there is too much bluetooth interference in an area... but my laptop is working fine. The wire also lets me practice with new versions of your software without using the slow Nokia, and offers a bigger screen,

-= Hillel =-

[jeremyp]

by jeremyp » Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:17 pm

So the "FTDI TTL-232R-5V" seems to become a "proved" cheap solution for people who are happy with a "wired connection" between the Merlin/Orion/Sky-Watcher and a PC, Mac, etc... or as a "replacement" solution when not in the field !

Yes definitely I am also using one of these cables. Works great on Mac as well

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:27 am

Hi Jeremy,

Wel this is now really confirmed ...!
Could-you give us more precision about the assembly ...., type of cable, wiring, resistors etc ...

Thanks in advance .

[hillels]

by hillels » Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:01 am

Claude,

You probably want to know the skinny from someone who knows what they are doing (e.g. jeremyp), but just a few more notes:

1. I used the standard 4-wire telephone cable but the coloring was "green yellow red black" instead of your "yellow green red black" so I just switch from yellow to green when hooking up ground.
2. The resistors are the same 220 ohm in your diagrams - got a cheap set from Radio Shack.
3. There should only be orange/yellow/black from TTL cord hooked up to the telephone wire's green/black as the picture above shows.
4. Because I didn't cut much from the telephone cord, when attached to the TTL cord, the whole coupled cable length is over 10 feet long. There were no issues in the tests I conducted with this length.

This worked for me, but all I did was look at the dataspec sheet listed above and try to mirror what you had done with the other cables. Is this close jeremyp?

-= Hillel =-

[jackwu]

by jackwu » Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:14 am

Claude,

Yeah, I just wanted the wired cable as a backup solution. The cable is only $20 and with shipping, it came to only $23 in the US. There will also be a time in the future on a trip when my Nokia 770 fails, or it runs out of batteries, or there is too much bluetooth interference in an area... but my laptop is working fine. The wire also lets me practice with new versions of your software without using the slow Nokia, and offers a bigger screen,

-= Hillel =-

Hillel, could you let us know where you can get one for $23 in total?

[hillels]

by hillels » Mon Mar 02, 2009 2:11 pm

jackwu,

Sure, I believe it was from:

http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?products_id=2586

The product is the TTL-232R-5V-WE, and the "WE" is for wire-ended instead of the plastic thingy. I knew I just wanted the exposed wires to do the soldering, and the 5v is what everyone was throwing around the forums. It's 20 bucks, with something like $3 shipping. I can say that the cable is quite vista friendly. Again, I'm no expert, but this worked for me!

-= Hillel =-

[fma38]

by fma38 » Mon Mar 02, 2009 3:03 pm

As it is based on a standard FTDI FT232RQ chip, it should work on all plateforms, including linux

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:43 pm

Hi Jack,

You live in Taiwan , I think !

FTDI has offices there :

Taiwan Office

Future Technology Devices International Limited (Taiwan)
2F, No. 516, Sec. 1, NeiHu Road, Taipei 114, Taiwan

Tel: +886-2-8797 1330

Fax: +886-2-8751 9737



E-Mail (Sales): tw.sales1@ftdichip.com

E-Mail (Support): tw.support1@ftdichip.com

E-Mail (General Enquiries): tw.admin1@ftdichip.com

Web Site URL: http://www.ftdichip.com

You can also find on Ebay, launch a search on "USB TTL"

[jeremyp]

by jeremyp » Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:38 pm

This worked for me, but all I did was look at the dataspec sheet listed above and try to mirror what you had done with the other cables. Is this close jeremyp?

Sounds about right to me. I just followed this post,
http://www.autopano.net/forum/p27797-2008-08-14-05-08-41#p27797
but omitted the V+ wire.

Maybe we should refer the to the RJ11/RJ12 "pins" instead of the wire colours, the colours seem to be different everywhere (mine were as well).. ?

[geraldcor]

by geraldcor » Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:30 am

Hello all,

I got my cable and everything is working well, under windows that is. How do I know what port the usb-serial adapter is on? I have tried a few things and I just get the error 'No module named serial'. In windows, I could observe the port through the device manager. Any ideas?

Greg

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:16 am

I Greg,

You can find this info in
-Configuration panel
-Device management
-Port Com & LPT

You will find there something like :
USB Serial port : COM X

You write that as "COM5" (as example) in Papywizard configuration/material/pilot/serial port
If you write only "5" this mean COM6 ( port 1 is 0, port 2 is 1 ...)

[geraldcor]

by geraldcor » Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:18 am

Those instructions are for windows I think. I can connect okay with windows. I was wondering how to see what port was being used on Linux. Sorry for the confusion. But yes that is good information for windows users if they can't find the port.

Greg

[fma38]

by fma38 » Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:11 pm

Usually, serial ports under linux are /dev/ttyS0 for the first, /dev/ttyS1 for the second and so on. If you are using a USB-serial adapter, it should be /dev/ttyUSB0, or maybe /dev/USB/ttyS0...

You said that the is a serial module not found. You need to install it. What distro are you running? Try something like:

$ sudo aptitude install python-serial

[geraldcor]

by geraldcor » Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:42 pm

Thank you!

I set the serial port to /dev/tty/USB0 and installed the python-serial package using apt-get. It works perfectly now. Thank you very much.

p.s. I am using Easy Peasy 1.0 which an Ubuntu variant for netbooks.

Greg

[mediavets]

by mediavets » Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:59 pm

p.s. I am using Easy Peasy 1.0 which an Ubuntu variant for netbooks.

Greg

So you are running Papywizard on a netbook?

Which brand and model?

Last edited by mediavets on Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[geraldcor]

by geraldcor » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:17 pm

It is the asus eeepc 1000H. I have it dual booting windows(7 beta) and linux so that is how I got it working under windows first. It seems to work like a charm now that I got the port situation all worked out.

I haven't tried the bluetooth option yet because for the most part, being tethered to the head is of no major inconvenience for me (and it's cheap )

Greg

[tarnis]

by tarnis » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:38 pm

Think I'm hsbing better results here...no crashes so far. CAble arrived yesterday. Will send back the bluetooth chip this week. For anyone else considering doing this please READ! 220ohm converters converter is attached to Orange and not Red!!!! Was starting to bang my head against the wall as I re-read and then looked back at the picture and realized the picture looks red and not orange Not that I didn't read it the first time but didn't register I guess. Anyways lemme go try and shoot somehting now.

Last edited by tarnis on Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[claudevh]

by claudevh » Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:10 pm

Hi all,

If you want to "make" a cable/connector yourselve ,

this is very important to consider the order of the wires and not their colors who can vary from one cable to another !!!

Have a look on this post were pictures represent "clearly" the order and the identification of the wires !
http://www.autopano.net/forum/p39798-2009-02-26-19-21-54#p39798