I have two SmoothieBoards, both of which are no longer working, after trying to connect to them from a laptop running Windows. One of these SmoothieBoards has been working very well for some time, the other is brand new (right out of the box). When trying to connect to the SmoothieBoard from a Dell Latitude E5550 laptop running Windows 7 (I typically use Linux, but needed to use Windows), using the latest driver (which appears to have installed correctly), I was able to successfully connect once to the smoothie via pronterface, however the second time I tried I was not able to connect and I noticed the following on the four LEDs.
VBB -> off
3v3 -> on (orange)
4 -> on (green)
3 -> on (green)
2 -> on (green)
1 -> on (green)
I thought perhaps I inadvertently damaged the board, so I tried to connect to a recently purchased smoothie right out of the box (no steppers, etc., connected, just plugged in the USB). Same problem, four solid green LEDs. I then returned to my Linux box and replaced the firmware and config with the latest defaults, and then I got the following (firmware did not flash?):
VBB -> off
3v3 -> on (orange)
4 -> on (green)
3 -> off
2 -> off
1 -> on (green)
I am at a complete loss on what to do, and fear the windows machine/driver may have broke my two smoothie boards. Any help on what to do would be greatly appreciated.
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Hello.
This is very strange, I have not this happen before.
First off, it is extremely unlikely the windows driver caused the problem. However there are some possible causes. For example, Windows could have corrupted the SD card.
Could you please :
- Ideally if you can, get another SD card, if not use one you already have.
- Format that SD card
- Put a new firmware.bin and config file
- Try again with linux first, note what happens
- Then try on windows
Thanks.
I tried this already, minus the reformatting part (since it appeared to be formatted correctly already), with a brand new SD card using the default config and firmware.bin files. I got this:
VBB -> off
3v3 -> on (orange)
4 -> on (green)
3 -> off
2 -> off
1 -> on (green)
I will try reformatting the card and repeating the procedure and let you know. Thanks for your help.
I reformatted a brand new 8GB microsd card using GParted (FAT32). I copied the latest default firmware.bin and config examples from github. Copied to the SD card and placed in the board. I plugged in a USB cable and I get:
VBB -> off
3v3 -> on (orange)
4 -> on (green)
3 -> off
2 -> off
1 -> on (green)
I can’t mount the sd card (in the board).
I unplug the USB cable, and plug it back in and get:
VBB -> off
3v3 -> on (orange)
4 -> on (green)
3 -> on (green)
2 -> on (green)
1 -> on (green)
This was done using a smoothieboard that has never had anything connected but a USB cable (it’s brand new). However, as I said, I have the same problem on a board that I have been using for a couple months via Linux without issue. All this started when I tried connecting using a laptop with Windows 7 as described previously. Is there anything else I can try?
Can you email me the contents of the SD card to wolf.arthur@gmail.com ? Thanks.
Ok, if you take a text editor and open the .bin or .cur files, you’ll see they are not firmware files, but actually HTML pages.
That’s because instead of saving the .bin firmware file, you saved the page containing it. Then the bootloader flashed this, and to the microcontroller it means nothing.
You need to make sure you actually get the .bin file, and flash that ( it’s easy to see, one is ~50kb while the other is ~300kb ).
http://smoothieware.org/flashing-smoothie-firmware
Cheers.
How incredibly embarrassing. That fixed it. Thank you so much for the help Arthur.
No problem, have fun with your board !