Tech Zone Techniques - Part 3

Following on from Part 2, I'm still trying to get my electronics moving in the right direction.

Step 9: Loading the firmware (still....)

During the last post I was trying to load the firmware and got an error not in sync...

I searched the forum and found this post. Reading through it I saw the following line "Wrong serial port in use for USB connection", and thought "I didn't set the serial port, so how will it know?", obviously it didn't. The Arduino IDE was set to COM1, not COM5 as it needs to be on my system.

I changed that and hit the upload button. Done in seconds. Boy was that dumb... 3 days of wondering what I did wrong (ok, I didn't come back and work on it for the 3 days as I was doing other stuff, but it still bugged me).

Ok, onwards and upwards, lets program that extruder, here are the steps followed:

1. I had already copied the configuration.h.dist to configuration.h in the Extruder folder
2. Moved the USB board to the extruder controller, remembered to invert it (ground is on the opposite side.
3. Loaded the Extruder/Extruder.pde sketchbook.
4. Modified the configuration.h tab to match my setup (left it all standard as I didn't see anything relevant to change) and saved.
5. Checked the temperature.h tab as I am running a thermistor. I wasn't sure is the default table is correct or not, so I left it be for now.
6. Selected the Tools->Board->Arduino Diecimila, Duemilanove or Nano w/ ATmega 168 board and then Sketch->Verify/Compile
7. My board was still connected to the PC from 2 above
8. Selected Upload to I/O Board and it worked!!!
9. Disconnected the USB and moved it back the main board

At this point I'd had enough for the day and decided to call it quits. Part 4 will start with wiring up the steppers, connecting some power and some ground lines as mentioned above.