Both motors not responding

Troubleshooting
1

My Maslow has done little else but a couple of cuts since purchased last December. I made some time to build the new frame in the past month and today tried to reconnect everything looking forward to finally doing some real cutting. Sadly the motors are not responding. I’ve read all I can find on the forum here. Reinstalled Arduino firmware, reset Ground control, checked that the power cable was in the right place, wiped EEPROM, tried to run Test Motors / Encoders. Both motors are silent. I’m running the latest firmware and Ground Control (1.18) . Everything worked pretty fine the last time, though that was months ago. Would not have expected the motors to pack up within that time frame, without being used. How may I verify if it’s a hardware issue or not?

2

Maslow_Error
Maslow_Error.PNG556×987 97.2 KB

This is what it looks like in Ground Control. Can anyone please tell if the error message holds any useful clues?

3

Hmmmmm I think based on that error message we can say it’s almost certainly a software issue. I think that the problem is likely caused by the big jump in version number with the update.

Since it looks like the issue is with the machine loading it’s position will you try to use the set chain lengths manual command and let us know what happens?

image
image.png1366×728 63.2 KB

4

Thanks @bar, I tried it to no avail. Even when I reset GC settings to default, It still says old position data detected, please set $12, $1, $19 and $20 to load old position data

Maslow_Error2
Maslow_Error2.PNG442×593 44.5 KB

5

Hmmmm darn.

So I’ve been looking into it and the section of code which is giving you this error is:

else if (EEPROM.read(5) == EEPROMVALIDDATA &&
        EEPROM.read(105) == EEPROMVALIDDATA &&
        EEPROM.read(205) == EEPROMVALIDDATA){
        bit_true(sys.oldSettingsFlag, NEED_ENCODER_STEPS);
        bit_true(sys.oldSettingsFlag, NEED_DIST_PER_ROT);
        bit_true(sys.oldSettingsFlag, NEED_Z_ENCODER_STEPS);
        bit_true(sys.oldSettingsFlag, NEED_Z_DIST_PER_ROT);
        sys.state = STATE_OLD_SETTINGS;
        Serial.println(F("Old position data detected."));
        Serial.println(F("Please set $12, $13, $19, and $20 to load position."));
    }

It looks to me like the jump in firmware versions is so big that we are ending up with some missing information that the machine needs. Ground Control should detect this automatically and send the missing information but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening. Let me keep digging and come up with another recommendation to try.

6

Thanks.

7

Let’s try to do what it want’s us to do and update those values. I’ve grabbed a copy of those settings for my machine and made a fake gcode file which will set them on your machine. Open it just like any other gcode file and press the green play button, and it will update your machine with those settings. Give the arrow buttons a click to see if it will move after that.

updateSettings.nc (43 Bytes)

1 Like
8

Oh wow, it works, the motors are now responding. Wish I understood what you just did fully, but I’m happy enough that the motors now respond. :man_dancing:

2 Likes
9

I wish I understood fully too :grin: Sorry about the trouble there I think it was just a matter of the big jump in the firmware version causing some hickups

10

No worries, there was something to learn there. Thanks again.

1 Like