Camera DB9 / Calibration Port

[roboticsguy1988]

Ok, i may be wrong, but if i am not mistaking according to the document about the camera, you can make your own "custom cable" to go to the DB9 port on the camera board. By hooking three wires to the specified pins (shown on the diagram below) and then of course hooking the apporpriote DB9 connector on the other end, i should be able to plug that into the computer and calibrate it that way...........without the hasle of taking over the cover off the camera box every time. Does that sound right?? Or does the calibration program require the use of more pins??

Sorry if you need me to explain more i can try......i am not good at explaining things........i am much better at showing someone what i mean.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by roboticsguy1988

Ok, i may be wrong, but if i am not mistaking according to the document about the camera, you can make your own "custom cable" to go to the DB9 port on the camera board. By hooking three wires to the specified pins (shown on the diagram below) and then of course hooking the apporpriote DB9 connector on the other end, i should be able to plug that into the computer and calibrate it that way...........without the hasle of taking over the cover off the camera box every time. Does that sound right?? Or does the calibration program require the use of more pins??

Sorry if you need me to explain more i can try......i am not good at explaining things........i am much better at showing someone what i mean.

Yes, you can do that. And then you can wire up the power in and ttl serial lines to un used pins on the db-9 connector. Then splice a serial cable, and solder on PWM cables to the other end to connect to PWM out, and the ttl serial converter.

[roboticsguy1988]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Yes, you can do that. And then you can wire up the power in and ttl serial lines to un used pins on the db-9 connector. Then splice a serial cable, and solder on PWM cables to the other end to connect to PWM out, and the ttl serial converter.

Yes in fact thats what we did we have everything going through a DB15 connector..........However the calibration part does not work when connected to the computer through the "custom cable". We have triple checked the wiring. And we have also unplugged the ttl serial converter from the robot controller when trying to calibrate through that. Yet it still doesn't work........everything else works fine. Also, it works when we use the DB9 cable that came in the kit.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by roboticsguy1988

Ok, i may be wrong, but if i am not mistaking according to the document about the camera, you can make your own "custom cable" to go to the DB9 port on the camera board. By hooking three wires to the specified pins (shown on the diagram below) and then of course hooking the apporpriote DB9 connector on the other end, i should be able to plug that into the computer and calibrate it that way...........without the hasle of taking over the cover off the camera box every time. Does that sound right?? Or does the calibration program require the use of more pins??

Sorry if you need me to explain more i can try......i am not good at explaining things........i am much better at showing someone what i mean.

Let me help Larry explain more. The attached thumbnail only shows three connections. RX,TX and GND. Standard RS-232 protocol connection with no hardware handshaking. Seems simple.

With the programing cable (black one) connected direct to the DB-9 port on the camera and direct to a DB-9 COM port on your computer. The calibration software communicated just find with the camera.

All we want to do is "EXTEND" the DB-9 port outside the camera box. We connected RX,TX, and GND as shown in the thumbnail with a straight through connection, we did not cross TX,RX or pin 2 or 3 anytime. We also double checked the connection with a ring tone.

When we connect the same programming cable to our newly modified "extention cable", the calibration software does not communicate. Our extension cable is ONLY 3 wires. What we believe are the only required according to the thumbnail attached. RX, TX and GND. However there is no connection somewhere. We do not have enough room to connect all 9 pins up to our extention cable. We prefer only to let 3 wires pass through.

The problem is that I don't feel that RX,TX, and GND are the correct connection required to program the camera using the Java software. But what confuses me more, is that it should be a standard RS-232 connection...pin 2 and pin 3 (RX and TX)....

Has anyone figured out the fact that we need more than just 3 connections to extend the programming port? If so, what pins do we need to extend if we only got three conductors to spare to get the signals we need to the outside world?

Are just stuck extending NINE WIRES? (All nine pins????)...Seems dumb for RS-232...where are those connection!

Hope that makes sense...

[Chris_Elston]

Well it doesn't get any more black and white than this, but we just can't get it to work...weirdest thing I ever saw...Anyone else tried to extend the DB-9 port so you don't have to take the cover off your camera to calibrate? I wonder if it's a noise problem in our extension cable...

[Sscamatt]

Make sure you are hooking them up to the right pins, if your looking at the back of the port the pins will be mirrored, so it could get a little tricky.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by chakorules

Anyone else tried to extend the DB-9 port so you don't have to take the cover off your camera to calibrate?

We extended the port, but used a 1.5" piece of ribbon cable and two snap-on DB9 connectors, rather than soldering individual pins.

[Mark McLeod]

Just for fun I tried a connector with just the three wires listed, and I got the same result you did, no communication. The PC/camera requires more than they're telling.

[roboticsguy1988]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Just for fun I tried a connector with just the three wires listed, and I got the same result you did, no communication. The PC/camera requires more than they're telling.

NO, it will work, we just checked our wiring, we accidently reversed the wires on the DB9 connector. It was just flipped opposite of what it should have been. Once we actually got them THE WAY THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO BE, it worked great.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by roboticsguy1988

NO, it will work, we just checked our wiring, we accidently reversed the wires on the DB9 connector. It was just flipped opposite of what it should have been. Once we actually got them THE WAY THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO BE, it worked great.

I probably did something similar then, or just had a bad connection.

[roboticsguy1988]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

I probably did something similar then, or just had a bad connection.

Yeah, we thought that we had it correct to, until we actually looked at the wiring closer and realized that we had the wires flipped opposite of what they should have been.