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MacBS2 and USB Servo controller (28823) — Parallax Forums

MacBS2 and USB Servo controller (28823)

geraldcorgeraldcor Posts: 4
edited 2008-04-24 13:22 in BASIC Stamp
Hello all,

I am very new to servos, stamps and pbasic. I was hoping to run macbs2 on my mac to program my Parallax USB Servo Controller. I installed everything, followed all instructions and the response I get is "Basic Stamp 2 detected but not responding. Check Power." I found a few posts on this forum regarding this, but they were dead ends.

I understand that it is lacking power, but isn't it supposed to be powered by USB (I have tried it on a Powerbook G4 and an Intel iMac). I see the com port and it is called usbserial-0000201A.

Has anyone gotten the USB servo controller working with macbs2? What can I do? Any help in general would be greatly appreciated.

Greg

Comments

  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2008-04-24 03:24
    MacBS2 has nothing to do with the Parallax Servo Controller. It's strictly an editor / compiler / downloader for Parallax Stamp Basic for the BS2 (with the exception of the BS2px). There's no Mac equivalent of the USB Servo Controller software. I believe the USB Servo Controller responds to the same serial I/O commands as the Serial Servo Controller, so you could use a Mac terminal emulator to talk to it (like ZTerm).
  • geraldcorgeraldcor Posts: 4
    edited 2008-04-24 07:09
    Oh. I see. what a disappointment. I guess the servo controller doesn't have a stamp? Well I downloaded ZTerm and have no idea what is going on or how to use it. I can't even get example code to work. This is turning into a major frustration. Looks like I've got a long road ahead of me. Thanks for your reply. Do you have any tips on using ZTerm?

    Greg
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2008-04-24 13:22
    I have ZTerm 1.1b7 which comes with a documentation file. It's a simple serial terminal emulator. You run it and specify a serial port, Baud, parity, # bits, etc. After that, whatever you type gets sent out the serial port and whatever characters are received from the serial port are displayed literally.

    Download the documentation for the serial version of the servo controller and that will show you what gets sent back and forth. You'd have to type the control sequences. Most of the commands require parameters to be the binary value of the characters sent and that is awkward at best to do by hand from a keyboard, but can be used for testing.
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