NEPO Arduino support / OpenRoberta USB

[Lars Pelz]

Dear OpenRoberta community,

today I was excited to find that Arduino support has finally been added to NEPO. I went right ahead and tried to connect an Arduino Uno using OpenRoberta USB and Windows 10, but to no avail. The Arduino serial port shows up in the device manager (see attached screenshot), but the "connect" button never becomes active. Unplugging the board and using other USB cables didn't help. The Arduino I used should be a genuine one (labelled "made in Italy"). The Arduino IDE is installed as well. The OpenRoberta USB installer didn't throw any error messages and asked me for user privilege elevation twice (MSI installer and DPinst).

I used the instructions I found on this page:

https://jira.iais.fraunhofer.de/wiki/display/ORInfo/Vorbereitung+Arduino

Am I still missing something? I'd be glad for any hints given. Thank you in advance!

Greetings - Lars Pelz

[Beate Jost]

Hi,

we will check this asap and get back to you. It might be an issue with "genuine" because we don't have one and that's why we haven't tested it.

Bests

Beate

[Lars Pelz]

Hi Beate,

so far I have tested:

- Arduino Uno, Arduino Nano Clone (CH340 USB-Serial) and mBot

- in Windows 10 x64 on two different machines

- in Linux XUbuntu 17.10 (will try 18.4 soon)

I can't get any setup to detect the uC boards.

Then I connected a Windows machine via USB to an EV3 (have always used WiFi before) with OpenRobertaLab installed and it was not recognized as well. The RNDIS-device is working fine. On Monday, I'll try an NXT...

Greetings - Lars Pelz

[Beate Jost]

This is strange, I have just installed the new USB Program on my private Laptop, Windows 10. It finds the Arduino Uno immediately. I don't have any other Arduino Installation, so no Arduino IDE. I have an older Arduino Uno, it has the following hardware IDs

USB\VID_2A03&PID_0043&REV_0001

USB\VID_2A03&PID_0043

To detect a compatible device we compare both, the VID and the PID. Maybe your device is from another vendor (if it is a Genuido, this seems to be obvious). Could you please check this?

For EV3 it might be another problem (I don't have one at home, so I can't test it) and NXT is not supported in this version of the USB Program anymore.

Thank you very much for your help

Bests

Beate

[Lars Pelz]

Hi Beate,

today (at work ;) I found a board that OpenRoberta USB finds and connects to. It's a Nano with the hardware ID

FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_6001

The Nano I tested on Saturday was bricked :( One down for me. All the others I unpacked worked.

My Italy-made Arduino shows up as

USB\VID_2341&PID_0001&REV_0000

The mBot has an Uno-compatible board inside (MEGA 328P) and HWID

USB\VID_1A86&PID_7523&REV_0254

AND then I discovered an "old" Arduino Uno clone (tore one of my "old" projects apart) and that didn't work either, HWID

USB\VID_2341&PID_0043&REV_0001

So, now I'm off testing coding, but I'd humbly recommend to integrate an option to select COM port and board type in the Extended Options dialog of OpenRoberta USB, just to be able to program compatible boards that aren't on the hardware list yet. Shall I raise an issue for this?

I'll also do some more testing on the EV3 later this week. A pity NXT isn't supported any more, but I hope you can still use old versions of OpenRoberta USB with NEPO.

BTW: The Conrad 3D printer RF100 (retail product!) runs off an Uno-compatible board too.

Regards, Lars

[Lars Pelz]

Hi Beate,

I just found another Uno clone with a CH340 as USB UART, having HWID

USB\VID_1A86&PID_7523&REV_0254

And there is another "genuine" Arduino Uno that came in the "orginal" packaging a few years ago and has HWID

USB\VID_2341&PID_0043&REV_0001

This is the same my "Funduino" Uno clone uses.

Roberta USB doesn't detect either of them.

Just to let you know.

Regards - Lars Pelz

[Beate Jost]

Thank you very much for the information! 

Meanwhile we have released a new version of the usb program. Please try the new version https://github.com/OpenRoberta/robertalab-usbprogram/releases

You will also find some instructions how to make the usb program to discover your specific arduino.

We would like to find out, how we could help people to connect their specific arduino. Maybe we will find a better or more user friendly  solution in the next months.

Bests Beate

[Lars Pelz]

Hi Beate,

it works like a charm! I'm so delighted that I can use OpenRoberta Lab to program mBots now! Now I can prepare some slides for my next workshop on Thursday...

Tomorrow, I'll gather some more IDs for the list in arduino-ids.txt. Maybe you can add them to the repo.

I still think that two dropdown selections (e.g. 'serial' and 'board') in the advanced options menu should do the trick. The options should be available COM ports (or ttys on Linux) and available Arduino board cores.

Regards, Lars Pelz