0v on Vbus ardunio communication

1

Hey guys, Im attempted to use the odrive with the UART communication (ardunio softserial). For some reason i get no response out of my odrive 3.6. The stock Arduino library returns a 0v signal and a 0 position. Yes the halls, gnd, power, resistor ect are hooked up as odrive recommends.

Ive attempted to reflash the stock firmware on the odrive with python, but i run into a strange NoBackendError.

Any idea on how to solve this issue?

2

Well first off make sure that you can control the odrive by configuring it over USB. Then debug the other issues.

3

Alright! Sadly i have yet to get the python library working, any suggestions on how to fix the backend error? I was able to fix the UART communication issues, it now reads bus voltage and completes calibration steps. However motor position will not change at all

4

Hi @pistonsoup I have been working with Odrive for quite some time now and I have tried position and velocity control. Now I want to establish UART communication between Odrive controller board v3.6 and Arduino UNO board. I have found the OdriveArduino library from the github page. But just like you, I am unable to read the vbus voltage. It just says 0V. But when I try via terminal I can read the voltage properly. Could you explain how you were able to fix the UART Communication issues in your case ? And suggest solutions ??

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5

Hi,

Could you please share a bit more info about your setup?

  • Which ODrive device and which firmware are you running
  • How do you have the ODrive UART input configured
  • How do you have the Arduino and ODrive wired together
1 Like
6

Hi, @Nicholas_Schneider thanks for your reply.

  1. The Odrive I am using is 56V Odrive V3.6 and the firmware is Odrive control utility v0.4.12.
  2. For UART I have enabled uart_a using odrivetool via terminal. And set uart0_protocol to ASCII protocol (I would want to use this rather than the Native protocol for now). And I have configured gpio1 and gpio2 to be used as UART pins.
  3. As for the connections between Arduino UNO and Odrive I have used pins 8 (RX) and 9 (TX) on Arduino UNO as per the code I have shared in the screenshots above.
  4. In Odrive as mentioned in the pinout of v.3.6, I have used gpio1 as TX and gpio2 as RX.I have connected GND on both the boards.
  5. I have connected power supply to Odrive (24 V) and I am powering Arduino via USB which is connected to my PC.
  6. I have used Arduino IDE to program the Arduino UNO board, I have used the library and test code made available by @madcowswe for UART communication.

I hope this answered your queries.
Kindly suggest me what changes would be required to solve the issues I am facing. Any corrections are welcome.

Thanks!

7

@KAVYA_DRAVID apologies, I only used the odrive for one project. I don’t think I would be able to remember exactly how I solved this issue (especially because I no longer have access to the code base haha)

I had to do 2 things to get this working for my application (I needed position control, to a teensy 4.1)

  1. Update firmware (my local firmware was very old)

  2. I ended up referencing the code base from a youtuber bellow:

Youtube

He has a variety of projects that have the code for teensy, I think you could modify for you application.

1 Like
8

@pistonsoup thanks for your reply. Do you mind sharing your reference from YouTube? I am unable to access the link that you have shared here.

9

(1) ODrive control utility v0.4.12 is actually the odrivetool version (which is pretty old, I would suggest updating, but this is unrelated), you can check the firmware version in odrivetool with
odrv0.fw_version_major and odrv0.fw_version_major.
I would strongly suggest updating the firmware if it’s not v0.5.6, you can do this by running odrivetool dfu.
(2) Okay cool, this all looks good, assuming uart_a_baudrate is still the default 115200?
(3) You have TX->RX and RX->TX right?
(6) I’m assuming these are identical, but just in case, can you confirm this is the same code?