Trouble Shooting

 

Most PCs have a number of COM ports, you might not have the correct port selected, you can change that in the Options>Port Menu    This window lists all the available ports, those in capital letters are recognized as FTDI USB serial ports and are usually the location of the ARMexpress Eval PCB or the ARMmite.

One other reason that communication could be lost, is that the driver can lose sync with the card if it is disconnected and reconnected with the USB, especially when BASICtools or TclTerm (under MakeItC) is running and connected to the card.  When this happens it is often necessary to restart the PC.  Because the serial port is being emulated, and the Windows enumerator gets involved, when the USB is disconnected, the various pieces of software can get confused if the port is open.  If you are using the original hardware serial port, normally with COM1 this is not an issue.

      This can be found in the Control Panel>System>Device Manager

      While rare there are systems out there with non-plug and play serial ports, or its possible for 2 com ports to have the same address.  The address can be changed from the Control Panel. 

 Control Panel> System> Hardware> Device Manager> Ports> Port Settings> Advanced

      Our software does not reinstall the USB drivers if they already existed.  We expect to be running version 2.6.0.0 dated 10/22/2009.  Find this in the Control panel>Driver properties

If this does not match, then you have an older driver and it should be updated...

      This will be shown if the port you were using last time the program was run is no longer available.  You must reselect a Port using the Option Menu to reestablish communication with the ARMmite or ARMexpress.

Or you might not have the correct baud rate selected.

The green LED should be on if the USB connection is made for the ARMmite, or when power is connected for wireless ARMmite or ARMweb.

See Connect USB

Wireless Serial link

When debugging the serial connection for the wireless ARMmite, make sure both modems are set to the same baud rate, otherwise one way communication is possible.  Check your solder connections.  Use a USB breakout board to monitor the communication of either side, connect the RXD pin of the USB breakout to either TXD or RXD on the ARMmite to monitor the serial communication. 

If you can see the Welcome message following pressing the reset button on the ARMmite wireless, then communication is running one direction.  Type a ? at the enter line, you should see a number of 4 digit hex numbers come back.  At this point communication is running in both directions.

You can also use BASICtools to send repetitive data through the serial port.  To do this check the Char mode under options, this will send out any key you hold down from the enter box, rather than the normal line buffering.  Then you should be able to see the data on a scope.  Remember to uncheck Char mode when done.

Odd behavior following Windows Update

In rare cases, when the Windows Update has automatically rebooted while BASICtools was running, the serial port settings of BASICtools have been corrupted.  To correct this, reboot the system, and if the problem persists delete the BASICtools configuration settings (BASICtools.ini, it will be regenerated when you run BASICtools). This file is located in the %AppData%/Coridium directory or in older versions of BASICtoos in Program Files\Coridium directory.  If you don't know where the %AppData% directory is, open a DOS command line and type    echo %AppData% .

Have Fun!!