Lynxmotion Tech Support

Yes standard airplane servos are what the Servo Erector Set uses. Bear in mind Hitec makes servos with the same physical dimensions that they call robot servos such as the HSR-5980 and HSR-5990. They are very expensive but have some cool features. But most people use the HS-475, HS-645 or HS-5645 for robotics.

Yes the Robonova has only one board. It makes the servo pulses and runs the behavior routine at the same time. However we use a more robust distributed computing system. This is where we use a dedicated, but very powerful, servo controller for the pulse generation, and timing of moves, and a separate equally powerful, microcontroller for the behavior.

Why do we do it this way? Because no matter how badly you mess up the behavior program your servo pulses will never become corrupt. Because they are two completely different processors. Also we do it this way because it is much easier to write code for. I think most programmers will agree that safely wrapping servo pulse generation, plus servo move coordination (which is what the SSC-32 does), and a complex behavior routine (Basic Atom Pro) would be difficult to accomplish with $125.00 worth of single chip processing power.

well, finally i face another problem - my pc doesnt want to send signals via com port. It just doesn't use it, though it is present (and working peacfully) in the "device manager" panel.

Connect the Tx pin to the Rx pin on your serial port. Then using lynxterm, see if if you receive what you send.

could you provide more explanations, please... Rx Tx?
lynxterm?

Tx (pin #3) and Rx (pin #2) below. Lynxterm bottom.

http://www.passmark.com/support/loopback.htm
http://www.lynxmotion.com/Product.aspx? ... ategoryID=

I grabbed the db9 image link. The only pins needed is pin2 and pin3. You can short them together with a small screw driver if you are careful.

well i did the "ver test" - it recives 16 bytes with the pins connected by a screw. When i connectr the robot i recieve 0.

what is my next step? I mean - should i connect the battery? or switch it on? to install the programs? or is it enough to use the com cable?

Also, when i start the robot without a cable but with a battery - it starts doing smth. But when swithced and with a cable it doesnt link to the computer.

fine, it seems that it is me who is stupid after all))... i downloaded the instructions from a hitec website - and there, they say to first attach the battery, then swith it on and ONLY THEN download the program. So that's what i am going to do at home in 6 hours...

now i have another problem - should the servos make sounds like "piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" ?

Servos typically hum under continuous load.
Digital servos usually hum at a higher frequency than analog servos.
Be aware of servos getting hot, too hot to touch is usually not healthy for the servos.

Sometimes when servos get corrupted signals and such, they will fully rotate in one direction until they hit the gear stop and stall, making a buzzing sound. Running a servo in a stalled condition is usually not good for the servo.

I thought of that too but somehow was under the impression he was using an ssc-32 which should minimize the chance of that.
Upon reviewing the thread I don't see that use of the ssc-32 was established so.. good catch.