TIC T500 Serial Commands

Hi

I am new to the TIC T500 units. What I am trying to achive is control the stepper by using a USB to serial adaptor connected to the T500 via the RX/TX pins and would then like to send it commands from a serial console like Putty, CMD or similar.

What will the commands be doing it this way. I have setup and configured the setting for the stepper in the TIC software and there is works well. Now just to get it to work on serial commands.

Thank you.

Hello.

You can find a list of the available commands in the “Command Reference” section of the Tic user’s guide. Once you find the command you want to use, you can reference the “Serial command encoding” section to see how the format of that command should translate into the serial bytes (each format type has an example you can use to help understand how it works). You will also need to determine whether you want to use the Compact Protocol or the Pololu Protocol, which are described in that same section.

By the way, you might consider using the Pololu Serial Transmitter Utility to quickly and easily test different serial commands.

If you are having problems with a specific command, you can post details about what bytes you are trying to send and I would be glad to help.

Brandon

Thank you for the quick response.

Okay I have now downloaded the Pololu Serial Transmitter utility and used the example to move to target command as the following in the 6-byte command.
0xE0 0x05 0x52 0x02 0x16 0x49
Do this tell me that it will move to target 05 steps then to location 52 steps etc?

Using it this way still did not do anything. Just to confirm will I be able to do this with a USB-FTDI module? Something like this Pololu USB AVR Programmer v2.1

I am not sure what you mean by this, but it does not sound like you understand what the command is doing from that question. Those 6-bytes are all being used to send one “Set target position” command. The “Set target position” command uses a 32-bit write format, so (as described in the “Serial command encoding” section I referred to previously) the first byte is the command byte (0xE0), and the next 5 bytes hold the 32-bits that specify the target position. Specifically, the second byte holds the most significant bits of the next 4 data bytes. Those next 4 bytes are broken up as shown in the color-coded example in the user’s guide, starting with the least significant byte.

Yes, you should be able to use something like our USB AVR Programmer to send serial signals to the Tic from your computer. If you are unable to get the commands to work using the example bytes from the user’s guide, there is likely something wrong with your setup. You should double check that you are using the same baud rate in the Serial Transmitter Utility that the Tic is configured for (9600 by default, but it is configurable in the “Input and motor settings” tab of the Tic Control Center). Also, you should monitor the Tic Control Center for any errors that might be stopping the command from taking effect. If the baud rates match and you are not receiving any errors, can you post some pictures of your setup that show all of your connections?

Brandon

BrandonM, Apologies for the late reply. I struggled quite a bit with the direct bit commands so opted just to go with the arduino library instead. Thank you for your assistance on above.