RCB-1 - PC Setup

Now it is time to change the default ID of one of the two RCB-1 boards. They both come configured as ID 0 and we want one to be configured to ID 1. First thing I had to do is connect the battery to the RCB-1 board. I noticed that I placed the battery with the cable coming out of the far side of the battery (from the RCB-1 standpoint) which makes it a tiny bit too short to connect it to the appropriate pins on the RCB-1. So I took off the robot's head and its based and rotated the battery.

 The serial cable is going to be used to communicate with the PC. The supplied Windows program HeartToHeart is going to be used for this task. Some PC motherboards don't come with serial ports any more. You may think that physical RS232 serial port have been out of commission since 1986 when the world ousted VT100 terminals in return for Unix Sun Stations and 10-Base-T. Get enlightened! In robotics RS232 is very much alive and kicking.

Serial cable is attached to the RCB-1 and the the laptop and the RCB-1 is turned on (note the rightmost switch is up in the picture below). The RCB-1's LEDs turn bright red.

We now run HeartToHeart, select the COM port and then press on the wrench-looking icon.

There's only one serial communications port on my IBM T21 laptop so I selected COM1.

By pressing the little the wrench-looking icon, the Options panel window is opened.

Assigning the board with ID of 1 is done by choosing 1 in the pull-down menus of both the ID and the Channel and the pressing "Write".

 Das ist alles. I hope..

Now we take the power and serial cables off the boards because they will actually be connected to board ID 0, which is the one on the left (remember that the one one the right has now ID 1). The two RCB-1 boards have to share the power supply. A cable is provided to connect the two boards and put them on the same battery power line.

Now I discovered that that there's a battery cord extender in one of the kit's plastic bags. Which means I didn't really have to rotate the battery before. It actually says in the manual to attach the battery extender cord to the left RCB-1. RTFM!

The serial cable is re-attached this time to the left side RCB-1

Here's the schema with all the non-servo cables:

In the Servo Extender cable bag, I found this little cable which is definitely not an extender. I think it is the "Gray ends cable" mentioned in the above schema.