I need some help with the 'Pololu Deluxe Serial Adapter'

Robotics and electronics discussion Electronics
1

Here’s my situation:

I bought the ‘Assembled RS232 Serial Adaptor’, not from you guys directly, but let’s have it ‘from the horses mouth’ then, which I received a couple of days ago and which is behaving ‘kinda strange’. I’m hooking it up to my serial-out on a MAC G5. Power supply from the PC itself: At first I tried 3.3V… yeah, grounded of course… with no success at all when ‘looping’ the TX and RX outlets to test the connection via Terminal. They are not communicating.

After several attempts of disassembling and reassembling my setup [I lost count how often] I figured maybe the old ‘more helps more’ strategy will give me the desired result… so I’m hooking it up to 5.0V… grounded of course… and ‘bang’ success… TX and RX outlets are communicating when looped. Hooray!

But only once! Because after I disassemble my connections again to build my desired setup, I cannot recreate the TX - RX communication whatever I try.

Any advice or hints would be highly appreciated. Thanx

Pololu Deluxe

2

Hello.

I do not have much specific advice to offer. There is not much to that board, and you had it working in one setup before disassembling it, it sounds like there is some detail mechanically that is not what you think it is (e.g. a poor connection, or some signal is not the one you think it is, etc.). Posting a picture might help us notice or think of something.

- Jan

3

Jan,

thanks for the quick reply!
You may indeed have a point here: after a good nights sleep I double- and triple-checked my entire setup & all the connections again and again only to find that my USB to serial port had disappeared from my USB device tree which suggests a faulty cable.

So thanks again for the ‘nod’ in the right direction, keep up the good work

All the best

Pololu Deluxe