Port Error

Hi There,

I think I have a fairly easy problem but yet still could not have solved it. I am using ardunio Uno, stepper motor and adafruit motor shield. I downloaded the stepper motor exercise from firefly. The port number is 3 for my ardunio but when I plug that in to the port input in the quad stepper motor compound it gives me the error: solution exception: input string is not in a correct format. However I just enter a number value, either with a panel or slider or just setting the integer.

Best,

Levent

Attachments:

Firefly error.png, 452 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on October 29, 2014 at 1:28pm

Hey Levent,

There is a bug in the current workflow for stepper control. It's something I plan to address very soon (I have been busy adding a bunch of other features/components). The older version of the Firefly Quad Stepper sketch was a little more stable, but didn't offer the ability to use a 'call-back' which is why I made the change in the first place. You may have more success if you download an older version of Firefly (from Food4Rhino) and give that one a shot. Sorry for the inconvenience. As I said, I hope to have this resolved soon.

Permalink Reply by Levent Ozruh on October 29, 2014 at 1:40pm

Hey Andy,

Can you tell me which one of them is an/the older version since they all seem to have the same date.

Best,

Levent

Permalink Reply by Juan Sepulveda on January 15, 2015 at 11:04am

Hi Andy, I have the same problem as Levent. The Quadstepper component turns red after some seconds and shows the same legend. I was hoping that last the last update would solve it but it doesn't.... which version do you recommend to install from food4rhino? thanks.

Permalink Reply by Piotr Baszyński on June 29, 2015 at 1:57pm

Hi, Andy
I tried to use Quadstepper component today and I came across exactly the same problem.
Where can I find older versions of Firefly, as on food4rhino I the oldest one is 1.0.068 and this one also does not solve this problem? Thanks.

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on June 29, 2015 at 2:38pm

Hi Piotr. The oldest version on the food 4 rhino site is 1.0067 (which is 32-bit which is the only one that was created during this versioning). I believe this will have the required stepper component/code you're looking for. Let me know if you still have trouble.

BTW, revising the quad-stepper component is on my to-do list... so hopefully a fix will be issued in an upcoming release. Thanks for your patience.

Permalink Reply by Alex Woodhouse on October 12, 2015 at 11:17am

Hi Andy,

Any new information on when the updated quad-stepper component might be available? I will attempt installing version 1.0067, but am hopeful a new release will be available shortly.

Thanks!

Alex

Permalink Reply by Jason Kelly Johnson on December 10, 2015 at 4:42pm

Alex, Replying to the email you sent me:

When hear that something works well for a 10-20 seconds then crashes it is usually a power issue. Steppers draw a lot of power and you must ensure your external power supply is providing enough amps (for 2 steppers you might need 3-4 amps depending on how much they are working). Something like this 24v 6amp supply would do the trick. Can you give this a try and report back?

Thanks, Jason

Permalink Reply by Piotr Baszyński on June 30, 2015 at 6:25am

Ok, I found the solution.

The problem was on my side. I was in a hurry and didn't notice that I had Arduino loaded with Firefly_Firmata. After replacing it with Firefly_QuadStepper, the component started to work.

But still, after a few minutes the same error occured which required restaring Rhino. This happened 2 or 3 times, after which it was working without any errors for about 30 min.

Permalink Reply by Winsion Liang on January 6, 2016 at 11:55pm