Closed Loop Stepper motor chatter at low speed causes?

[WobblyHand]

I was looking for the program that I used. I believe it is the same as in CLSeries_setup.rar. I'm no expert on this but it seems that setting the dip switches to 0000 allows software control of the driver.

Do you have the cable that is used? Where did you get it? SteppersOnline wants $1.71 + $20.83 for shipping. I have bought lots of stuff from China, and the shipping they are charging is a super premium rate. I don't need it overnight! They don't seem to have the cable on their eBay Store. Do you know how it is wired? It's only 4 pins.

 

[WobblyHand]

Oh, there's another possible route to at least getting some information on the commands used. If they _are_ hard-coded in the executable it's very likely they are in a table that includes the ASCII commands. This is where the "dd" command-line utility could be your friend. That's very definitely hacker territory but could be useful to verify analysis results if you're monitoring the serial data stream.

I used gHex to look inside the setup file, but didn't find anything obvious. Probably need to run it in WINE to let it create an ini file, then snoop around. I'm not sure how I would use dd for internal file inspection. Looking through a hex file is not my idea of fun.

Played around with grep and strings. Nothing found, but not sure I was doing it right either.

Have no idea if this is a 32 bit app or 64. No idea which wine to install.

 

[RJSakowski]

It seems like a good deal until you click on the shipping. $1.71 for the cable, $20.84 for shipping from China! Cable is $4.27 in Germany, but no shipping options. Can't seem to find the cable online elsewhere, yet.

I made my own cable. I spliced an RJ45 cable to a DB9 serial cable. I'll find the cable and figure the pinout.

 

[RJSakowski]

I made my own cable. I spliced an RJ45 cable to a DB9 serial cable. I'll find the cable and figure the pinout.

I misremembered. It is an RJ11. I rung the pins and it appears the cable conforms to the pinout in the user manual; Pin 2 wasn't connected.

 

[WobblyHand]

I misremembered. It is an RJ11. I rung the pins and it appears the cable conforms to the pinout in the user manual; Pin 2 wasn't connected.

View attachment 420690

Thanks for the pin out. My connector is not RJ11. It only has 4 pins. Are the signals actually RS232 levels? +/-10V, +/-5V or are they 0-3.3V?

 

[RJSakowski]

Thanks for the pin out. My connector is not RJ11. It only has 4 pins. Are the signals actually RS232 levels? +/-10V, +/-5V or are they 0-3.3V?

My driver is buried deep on my cabinet so I can't examine the RS232 port. Only four pins are used, actually so a standard RS11 phone connector worked. I used on that had come with a DSL modem. As to voltages, I can't comment except to say that the driver interfaced with the serial port on my old Win XT computer. I was not able to connect via a USB to RS@#@ adapter. There is more detail here, starting at post 263. https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/electronic-lead-screw.76101/page-27

Do you have a user manual for the driver? All those that I have seen online show an RJ11 jack.

 

[homebrewed]

I used gHex to look inside the setup file, but didn't find anything obvious. Probably need to run it in WINE to let it create an ini file, then snoop around. I'm not sure how I would use dd for internal file inspection. Looking through a hex file is not my idea of fun.

Played around with grep and strings. Nothing found, but not sure I was doing it right either.

Have no idea if this is a 32 bit app or 64. No idea which wine to install.

dd is good for this because you can tell it to dump the stuff it finds in a file as ASCII characters. Looking at hex equivalents, not so good.

 

[WobblyHand]

dd is good for this because you can tell it to dump the stuff it finds in a file as ASCII characters. Looking at hex equivalents, not so good.

In my defense, gHex does convert hex to readable characters in the right side of the screen. Other tools also didn't show any character strings with "serial" in it.

 

[WobblyHand]

My driver is buried deep on my cabinet so I can't examine the RS232 port. Only four pins are used, actually so a standard RS11 phone connector worked. I used on that had come with a DSL modem. As to voltages, I can't comment except to say that the driver interfaced with the serial port on my old Win XT computer. I was not able to connect via a USB to RS@#@ adapter. There is more detail here, starting at post 263. https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/electronic-lead-screw.76101/page-27

Do you have a user manual for the driver? All those that I have seen online show an RJ11 jack

I have a manual for the CL57T hardware. I have been unable to find any written documentation for the software, only the exe file. I will have to install wine so I can install the software. However, I did take the driver apart and there is only one possible connector that it can be. It is unlabeled and behind a breakaway plastic tab. The implication is this is a test connector only. It is not an RJ11 or telephone like connector. It has male pins.

 

[ttabbal]

For getting strings from the program, you probably need to install it first and look at the exe/dll files it leaves. If I remember correctly, Linux boxes generally have a program installed named "strings" or "string" that pulls the ascii data out as well. Setup files are usually compressed, so you can't get much from the raw setup fine.

Try asking the vendor. Sometimes they have info that they didn't think people would ever want or shipping options perhaps.

For the connections, two of the pins are probably power/ground those usually go straight to power planes. The other two are likely RX/TX for serial, probably vcc/vdd levels as that's so common with microcontrollers. If you can get the real cable, use your scope to verify the logic levels. The cheap logic analyzers are handy for this as well. You might even get lucky and catch handshake pulses on one of the lines. That would tell you levels as well.

Or it could be a ICSP port or something else entirely. Given that it would be accessible while assembly is in progress, and the 4 pins, makes me think it's probably serial though.