Good morning all, been a while since I've been on here. I'm doing a basic DC motor, clockwise/counterclockwise demo. It was kind of working, then I noticed my push buttons weren't properly oriented. Long story short, my TX led is dim, and my COM port isn't highlighted. Did I short something?
The battery is likely empty. Use 4 or 6 x AA cells instead depending on the mptor.
I was not there so I do not know. I would go with a week battery and a voltage drop through your motor controller. I cannot tell a lot from the fuzzy frizzy picture. Schematics are much more readable then fuzzy pictures, Even hand drawn is better. Also there is a blue blob I assumed is the motor controller, posting a link to technical information would help. Links to azon and other similar sales outlets do not have technical info, just sales data. Just a side note the battery manufacturer love it when you use 9V batteries they sell a lot of them because they are not good for this type of application.
I agree with @Railroader , you need a better motor power supply. 9V smoke alarm batteries do not have the current capacity to power a motor for long, if at all.
Just power up the Nano? by itself and run a blinky sketch on it
Thanks you all for responding. Luckily I didn't use a 9V battery, I used a power supply. I'll try to find a better picture. So what about the COM port not showing. I've tried the device manager solution.
Great PP3 picture! Do you mind if I use it too?
No problem @jremington. Use it all you like. I have a "better" one, but it is on my other computer. I will post it later and you can use it, too, if you like.
Here it is:
I'm using Uno, so can I power it through my laptop?
If you are willing to risk blowing a USB port. But I would just get an external power supply that can sustain the required current. Choose the motor power supply based on the stall current of the motor and the motor supply voltage. The stall current can be several times the running current. The stall current will be drawn, briefly, every time that the motor is started. The stall current should be listed in the motor data sheet.
If the 9V battery is low then your 5V rail can also be low and the processor will not run. Use your DMM (Digital MultiMeter) to monitor the 5V rail to confirm that it is 4V or above and stable. If it is not, that would explain why the serial port won't work.
Will the serial port show up and work if you disconnect the motor?
The choice of the 9V battery as a power source is an obvious source of problems. Eliminate the obvious before trying to troubleshoot further.
You should be able to power the Uno from your USB port after disconnecting everything else.
Check to see if its working or not. As I said earlier, just run a short program to see if the Uno itself is OK.
If it is working, then, as @groundFungus said , power it from a beefier power supply, and connect one item at a time.
Okay, thanks. If I remember right, I wasn't powering from a power supply, as I'm doing now. The power supply was connected to the board. As illustrated, I have it connected directly with nothing else. I'll do the blink sketch, as you all said. Don't I have to have components hooked up to test the 5V rail? Also, why is my TX led dim, does this only light up when it's running code?
The Tx light should light up only when the Uno is transmitting. If your blink sketch is working, then likely the Uno is fine. Not sure about the dimness of the Tx LED
Next steps would be to add one item at a time, while monitoring voltage at the Uno 5V pin and the motor supply pin.
Okay, thanks so much. I'll do a blink sketch, then I'll see if the COM port will reappear, because it's not showing.
So I did a "virtual serial com port", and the com ports came up. However, a "not in synch" message is coming up. It's like a timeout message.
So I did the blink sketch, and it won't work. I added COM port 1 and 3, with virtual serial port driver Pro (after adding unnecessary ports). I watched countless videos, and went through each step, except one. This last step is to burn the bootloader from another arduino. Fortunately I have an Arduino Mega (even the Mega won't do blink). Do you think this will fix the blink sketch? The error code is included below.
Could you please copy and post the error messages rather than a screen shot. Hard to see.
Are you using a USB hub? Try to connect directly to your computer.
Re-start your computer (not Power/Shut Down).
Go to control panel and look at the com ports. Did your computer recently update windows, etc? Are you are having the same trouble will all your Arduinos?