New Nova, totally stumped.

[Spook2]

I'd surely like to know what Hitec has to say.

Oh wait, here's a thread of possibility... I just noticed - looking at the pics you posted, it looks like your charger is plugged into the wall. Is the other end running to the 3024? You're only using it for charging right? Not operating? I know that can do some bad stuff to the board. ...just a thought.

The charger has never been connected while the RN was on. I remembered reading about the potential dangers of that, so I've been careful in that regard. Charging ONLY!

I'm going to finish answering the latest posts, and then I'm going to give HiTec a call and see what they have to say.

[Spook2]

Hello

Has anyone thought about the two versions of controller-boards.
Version a and b are different in the position of some servos, mostly the arms I think.
And perhaps the board is labeled wrong.

But that would not explain the problems with the legs.

Have you also checked the plugs of the servos? Signalcable has to go towards the CPU on the board and the plug has a bit of extra material near the signalcable.

Get the german version of the manual from robonova.de and look on page 31. There are the two versions of the board explained.

Yes, I've checked the signal cable orientation about a hundred times. All the grey signal wires are towards the center of the controller.

The board I have is a 2.5 and at least according to the Ver. 1.0 English manual I have, the hookup is the same as the Ver. 2.3 board

[Spook2]

I'm pretty sure its the orentation of the plugs, I had the same problem after building mines. When using the manaul my leg servos were not plugged in the correct order. So i unplugged them all and just plugged them in serial order, once i did that RN-1 would stand up. all i know is that the manaul was not correct, or maybe i was mis-interperting the badly translated (printed) manual.

Can you clarify what you mean by "serial order"? I'm a little unclear on this. My first thought was that the board order was different from what the manual says because some servo movement does not correspond with the servo that is being commanded to move on the screen. IOW, if in the zero point control screen I click on servo #4, servo #3 on the bot is the one that actually moves. If I click on #7, servo #6 actually moves.

A complete rundown is 0 moves 0, 1 moves 1, 2 moves 2, 3 moves nothing, 4 moves 3, 6 moves nothing, 7 moves 6, 8 moves nothing, 12 moves nothing, 13 moves 12, 14 moves 13, 18 moves nothing, 19 moves nothing, 20 moves 19, 21 moves 20, and 22 moves 21.

There seems to be some strange pattern to the madness but my addled brain just can't seem to pull it together.

Anyhow, off to call HiTec now.

[Spook2]

Anyhow, off to call HiTec now.

Well I called HiTec USA, explained the situation...and I got an answer!

Unfortunately the answer went something like "Huh, that's odd. Wonder what that could be?"

To their credit though there was no wishy washy what did you do to screw it up kind of talk. The guy on the phone said he'd send UPS to pick it up, or send me a UPS sticker and I could send it myself. I opted for the sticker because then I don't have to worry about missing the UPS guy when he comes. He said they'd get it fixed right away and send it back out, and it won't cost me a nickle, even for shipping.

Other than the disappointment and the extra time I have to wait, you can't beat that deal with a stick.

I don't feel so bad now, because the tech was as totally baffled as I am as to what's going on. I'm hoping when they send it back they include a report on what the problem was.

[gsferrari]

See if you can get a pre-assembled one in return. Saves you time and you are guaranteed a working robot.

[Morbeious]

Serial meaing 1 2 3 4 in order in which they stack up from ankle to hip. anyway if your sending it in, I'm suppurised they didnt know. The main tech is Toni. I've had many conversation with him, after building mines. the "arteritis cramp", thats what i called it. lol.. This was one of my coversations with him, lol, in which he instructed me to check the serial order. I still ended up with 2 bad servo's thats smoked when i tried to download a program , so I shipped it myself cause they only use ground shipping, your looking at 2 weeks before you get it back, but thats depending on where your shipping from. anyway the tech's are great, and very helpful.


Good luck..

[Spook2]

Well after 30 days from when I originally received my RN-1 I FINALLY got it back from Hitec. It turns out the board was "seriously misaligned" whatever that means, and apparently it somehow fried a servo while it headed down the pooper.

The good news is that after an initial tense moment (setting zero point one of the arms didn't function properly) everything seems to be okey dokey. At first I had the blinky led problem, but after I gave it a nice full charge and loaded the template program it appears to have gone away. I'll keep my fingers crossed anyway.

Hopefully I'll get into playing with the programming soon. Unforutnately I have a bad habit of getting way too many things going at once and getting spread too thin. Right now I've got an RN and BoeBot to figure out in my hobby room, an ALMOST finished CNC router I'm building in my garage, THREE jeeps in various states of repair, AND a plasma table I just bought that I have to go to NY to pick up. It's going to need some refurbishing and I knew beans about CNC plasma tables, hence the CNC table in my garage. It's a learning tool or "practice run" for the big one I'm picking up (10' x 13'). The big one is going to be for my company, the garage unit is for learning and will be used to build it's own more accurate successor. My goal is to end up with a nice hobby sized benchtop cnc mill and lathe when I'm all done.

Anyhow, busy busy busy but thanks to all you guys that tried to help me out. Turns out it WAS one of those times where a guy was just SOL.