Debugging Questions

Post your debugging questions here.

I'm having trouble with serial communication. The LED's are flashing but I'm not getting any data on the PC. What's up?

Neither style THC can be powered by the USB cord connected to a PC. You must use an external supply to power the test of the board or you will get conflicts with the serial port (the normal USB connection and the THC data connection use the same port - so stuff doesn't work).

How can I figure out if my serial port is working?

The first thing to do is to loop back the Rx and Tx on your USB to Serial. Then use a terminal program and see if typed characters are echoed back. If not, it's a problem with you USB to serial converter or the PC drivers for it.

The Mach 3 screen doesn't look the same. How do you use the THC with Mach 3?

The Mach 3 plug-in has the least amount of debug time on it. I've had issues with the screen designer that I haven't figure out. Screens look great on my development PC, but bad on my CNC PC. When are just starting to debug the system, it's best to use the stand-alone PC app. This lets you capture voltages so that you can begin to understand your torch's behavior.