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I soldered up a serial cable to the 9x following precisely the various tutorials out there and have tested all connections several times but I can't get it to work.

When I plug in the serial cable, it doesn't automatically come on like it does with either a trainer cable or the SP usb connection, is that normal?

When I power it on after the cable is connected, I only get the backlight to turn on, nothing comes up on the screen, if I unplug the cable it turns on as usual.

Any ideas?

I have pinout as follows:

1 => MOSI
2 => 5v VCC
5 => RESET
7 => SCK
9 => MISO
10 => Ground

I'm hoping one of the geniuses here can help me solve this.

Thanks in advance.

Assume you have wired your custom serial into a USBasp device? And then into the pc?


How far from the USB asp do the leads run. You really need to keep the quite short!

Rob


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Inside the radio from the board to the 9pin serial is about 3-4 inches, outside from the serial to the USBasp is about 11-12 inches. Do I need to shorten either one of those?

I would start by reducing the length on the outside. Try get down to 1 to 2 inches. Closer the better.


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OK, I shortened the outside ribbon cable to about 4" with no change. The guys on youtube are running the cable all the way up to the top of their radio, then out the extension cable to the USBasp, theirs must be quite a bit longer than mine.

backlight comes on but nothing else.

Should the serial connection from the USB be enough to power the radio up? Or do you have to turn it on manually when plugging in via serial programming cable?

Normally it is enough to power the radio.... Buy maybe you USB port is short on power?




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I thought I read many months ago that some had trouble because the backlight drew too much power from the USB port on some computers and loaded it down?
Any chance you can try another computer or powered hub?
Just trying ideas.
SM

OK, I just tried a different computer and I tried a powered USB Hub and still no go on powering up the radio. I have done continuity tests from each board solder point to each pin, is there a possibility that a solder joint may not be getting a good connection or maybe shorting out something else...I'm grasping at straws on this, running out of things to check. I have also tried a different USBasp programmer as well just in case. I wanted to be able to program this radio on the cheap but the SP board is looking much cheaper to me now after spending who knows how many hours on this cable.

Maybe post a picture of your setup?

Also, double check your 10 way cable, there have been a number cables where the red stripe has been on pin 10 of the connector, not pin 1. On the USBasp 10 way connector, you should find a small triangle marking pin 1.

Just asking the obvious, you do have the jumper on the USBasp fitted to pass the 5 V power to the 10 way connector?

When plugged in, have you measured for 5V on the USBasp 10 way connector and on the 9x main board?

Mike.

YES!!! Thanks for having me triple-check everything. I knew you guys would come through.

I think my first mistake was to use my own pin numbering system with some old serial cables that I already had because I wanted to save a few bucks and not actually buy any serial cables (who buys serial cables anymore right?, I'm not throwing any away anymore just in case). This way I just go straight through the serial male to female connector and make my cable pin adjustment at the USBasp side connector. So I had a few pins mixed up because they matched my numbering scheme but my numbering scheme was wrong.

I'm going to post a pic anyway as there might be someone who wants to do the same thing using an old 9 pin ribbon cable out of an old computer (they all had them), cut a hole out the bottom and screw it in tight, works great. Notice my nice 'short' cable now (thanks Rob), still works great anyway.

BTW, the USBasp does and should fully power up the radio without you needing to turn it on, just in case anyone runs into a similar problem.

Thanks guys, just finished my FPV camera gear setup tonight, so everything is just about ready to go for my maiden FPV flight...wish me luck! I'm using a pan/tilt camera with the 2 top POTS taking care of the panning/tilting until I get a head tracker.