Makeblock Orion not responding

#1

Hello, just bought a Ultimate robot kit for Radioshack. I have experience with Arduino Uno.
From the box I’ve been able to build the Robotic Arm Tank and worked fine, just the RGB strip didn’t work. The next day I decided to program the Orion board with the Macbook and problems started to arise. Couldn’t use the Arduino IDE neither following the directions of the Makeblock webpage. Tried to upload the CH34 and the using terminal but nothing happened. Anyhow I could make Arduino IDE to show Ardublock but no Makeblock orion card. Then I tried Scratchbot showing connected via bluethoot showed connected but nothing worked so I tried connecting it via USB, same story there. I tried then upgrading firmware and after several times it worked, after that the card stopped responding at all. So I tried again with bluetooth and the app on the iphone which told me to download the firmware, it started and freezed at about 30%. Now it says the same that needs the firmware and asks to reset arduino but when I hit the button nothing happens, its unresponsive. I tried to upload a sketch with Arduino IDE using USB and selecting Arduino UNO card but shows this error: " This report would have more information with
"Show verbose output during compilation"
enabled in File > Preferences.
Arduino: 1.0.6 (Mac OS X), Board: “Arduino Uno"
Tamaño binario del Sketch: 1.082 bytes (de un máximo de 32.256 bytes)
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding”

Please help. Thank you.

#2

Hi. I have the BT starter robot kit, use PC/windows for the Arduino IDE (Orion Micro -> usb), and use an android-based tablet for the BT. Your experiences sound the same as mine. I have written a few posts that might help you discover a solution for your components:
http://forum.makeblock.cc/t/code-update-not-working-for-orion-board/926 and http://forum.makeblock.cc/t/firmware-update-issues/925 .

You will see that I started making progress but starting with very simple diagnostic tasks, one step at a time–a 1A >>center-positive<< DC wall-wart (selectable between 3v and 12v) and a single motor. When it came time to figure out what was going on with the Orion, I started with basic sketches–blink, buzzer, motor test.

See also my post and following discussion related to the “avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding” and the “firmware update” issue. I am not sure I understand it, but I hope my experiences will lead you to a solution.

By the way, I did look at the mbot_firmware.zip sketch in the Arduino IDE last night, and it looks lit it is a sketch. Maybe when I ran it, the Arduino IDE told me I had to put it in its own folder and that’s what caused the reset button to load the sketch that the android app wanted. This is just a guess.

However, I think there might be a different “firmware” file for iOS. Not sure, though. I seem to recall reading something that lead me to that.

I hope this helps somewhat.

Steve

#3

Thank you very much Steve, I read your posts like 4 times now!

I’m trying to understand also the way this board works!!! (Never had a problem with my arduinos! At least this big kind!).

Please tell me which setting do you have on the arduino IDE (Port and board selected) before compiling the sketch with the Makeblock firmware, I want to try that.

With mine, something happened when I tried to use scratchbot, exactly when it upgraded the firmware.

My reset button is not working so Im wondering if it is now a hardware or software problem. In the arduino when you press reset you see some activity on the TX and RX leds, here with the BT app when it prompts reset and I do it nothing at all.

Today with the scratchbot I got some activity uploading example sketches but it returned 0 results.

I mailed Makeblock to see what do the have to say about this issue.

Yesterday I bought a new board which I’ll be using only via BT until I get to know how this works. Anyhow I want this one to work at least as you did so I can now nothing blew up in its circuitry and its just a matter of software.

So please tell me as if I were an idiot how you get to run the firmware sketch via the Arduino IDE so I can try that also.

Thank you very much!

#4

HI All,

I am trying to set up the starter kit (tank) IR. I connected the robot via USB and installed the driver but my computer cannot recognize it and nothing pops up. I’m running Mac OSX 10.8.5 - Is there anything I can do to get these devices to communicate?

#5