Phidgets Forums

Hi,

Today I tried upgrading the firmware on one of my Stepper Phidgets and it looks like the upgrade failed. Both Stepper Phidgets were like the one on port 0 before I tried upgrading the firmware on the Stepper Phidget on port 1. The firmware got downloaded and installation failed the first time so the firmware was automatically downloaded again and then the upgrade seemed to have succeeded. So I clicked the back button and then the table in this screenshot was shown:
Is there a way to recover this Stepper Phidget?


Thanks, Wouter

I kept the Stepper Phidget with a motor connected to the SBC and after a while it started to make noise and rotate slowly. I touched the motor to make sure that is was vibrating and it was so hot that I burnt my finger and it now has a big blister. Any clue?

Wouter

To reset the firmware upgrade process, disconnect the board completely (including power supply) and reconnect. It should show up as a Stepper again.

As for the heating issue- if it's the frozen Stepper you're referring to, the motor coils could stay engaged during the firmware changeover, so if you left it powered in a stuck state it could heat up if left that way for long enough. This is something we're aware of and are fixing in future stepper controllers. If you ever have a device that's behaving strangely, you should disconnect it from power until you know what's wrong. If it's the working stepper that's having heating issues, you may want to set the current limit to a lower value to limit the amount of current going through the motor coils, or disengage the stepper entirely when stopped if you don't need it to hold position.

mparadis wrote:To reset the firmware upgrade process, disconnect the board completely (including power supply) and reconnect. It should show up as a Stepper again.

Except that it doesn't. I disconnected the Servo Phidget and didn't reconnect it since I wrote my post here. I just connected it again but the status has not been reset:
Is there anything else I can do? I am very familiar with the Linux command line if necessary.

mparadis wrote:As for the heating issue- if it's the frozen Stepper you're referring to, the motor coils could stay engaged during the firmware changeover, so if you left it powered in a stuck state it could heat up if left that way for long enough. This is something we're aware of and are fixing in future stepper controllers. If you ever have a device that's behaving strangely, you should disconnect it from power until you know what's wrong. If it's the working stepper that's having heating issues, you may want to set the current limit to a lower value to limit the amount of current going through the motor coils, or disengage the stepper entirely when stopped if you don't need it to hold position.

That's good to know. Thanks, I'll remember that.

I also think that the motor that overheated got damaged. It is this NEMA-11 stepper motor https://www.phidgets.com/?tier=3&catid= ... prodid=341 and it won't rotate faster than som 75000 RPM anymore while the max speed is 115000. When I try a faster speed, the motor stalls and doesn't rotate until the speed drops again. I connected another NEMA-11 Phidgets motor (I have 4 in total) and that one will go up to 115000 RPM. So at least I have two again but at some point I am going to need all four.

mparadis wrote:To reset the firmware upgrade process, disconnect the board completely (including power supply) and reconnect. It should show up as a Stepper again.

@mparadis, anyone? Is there a way to reset the firmware on the Stepper Phidget that works?

It's possible the interface on the SBC doesn't behave the same as the Windows/Mac control panel when it comes to firmware upgrades. Can you plug it into a Windows or Mac machine and see if it resets in the control panel?

As for the motor, I'd be hesitant to say that it's been damaged just because it's stalling at a lower velocity than the other motors. If something melted inside the motor I'd expect it to not work at all because a shorted coil will essentially seize the motor. A stepper will stall any time it misses a step at high speed, which could be caused by mechanical resonance or some other interruption of the motor signal. For sustained high-speed applications DC or BLDC is generally preferred.

mparadis wrote:It's possible the interface on the SBC doesn't behave the same as the Windows/Mac control panel when it comes to firmware upgrades. Can you plug it into a Windows or Mac machine and see if it resets in the control panel?

Thanks for the great suggestion. Unfortunately that's not possible since the Stepper Phidget only has a VINT port and the only VINT hub I have is built in the SBC. Any other suggestion?

Good point about the motor. I'll test further.

You can firmware upgrade remotely by installing the Phidget drivers on a Windows or Mac computer in the same local network, and then enabling the Phidget Network Server on the SBC.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.