Posts by pynting

Very interesting and insightful response!

And thanks for letting me know that the work has already been done, saves a lot of time wasted.

I do not entirely understand what you mean by "default"? It is strange to me that that there is no sort of stored (and changeable) counter value. How else can it know how much time is left until it needs replacement?

Do you have the binary file for the REV07 chip to reset it?

And for others that need it, the REV10 binary as well, so that those can be replaced?

Do you know if the MCU of the REV08+ board are pin compatible with the REV07? In that case, do you think it is feasible to do a chip swap?

Hi, I have the same issue as many, my battery unit DSQC508 3HAC5393-2/XX (07 in my case) is end of life and the counter is at 0, my revision number is below 10, so the whole unit needs to be replaced... This is really wasteful if you ask me, and I don't know what technical reason there is for this very blatant example of planned obsolescence.

I lifted the sticker on the MCU and saw that the "brain" of the board is a regular old Atmel AT90S8535. It has 512bytes of EEPROM, and my theory is that there is a counter of some sort which value is stored in EEPROM. If this is the case, one could (hopefully) with relative ease flash the EEPROM with another value, breathing new life to the board.

If the revision number of the board deals with changes in the firmware only, one could perhaps just flash the firmware of the later revision on to an earlier board?

As of yet, I have not been able to read from the chip, but there is a programming connector on the board (next to the MCU) with at least the following pins exposed:

PIN CHIP

1 TXD

2 RST (prog)

3 SS

4 MOSI (prog)

5 MISO (prog)

6 SCK (prog)

7 RXD

8 GND

It would be great if someone else was willing to help out with this. It could save people some money if they were able to replace the battery only by applying this fix!

If we go the "flash EEPROM only" route, the easiest would be to compare the EEPROM of a chip on a board with time left on it and an zeroed out board (my board). Then we can probably see the right address of the counter.

If we get the firmware of a later revision board, we should probably do a detailed comparison of the PCBs themselves and look for physical differences between the two boards. If there is none, one could presume that it would work flashing the new firmware onto the old board?

I do not have the board in front of me ATM, but will update the post later today with more details.

I really hope this could be a solution. If anybody has these boards and was willing to help, that would be great!

I need to chime in and thank RobotMd as well!

That document really saved my day, as I have a robot and controller, but no teachbox.

With the commands in the document one is able to fully set up the robot using only a serial connection!

I think it would be a very good thing to upload that doc to the "Manuals, Software and Tools" sections of the forum. Would have saved me many hours of frustration

Hi, I found myself in the exact same position, with the same robot and controller, as you until last night.

After reading through the entire 129 pages of forum threads looking for solutions and in the end buying another DSQC202 board, due to the encoder part of the board not working, only to discover that the new board had a different error! I put the removable chips from the old board on to the new one, and presto, green enable light on the 202 and no error lights all around!

I made the jumper connections sjx mentioned (in addition to the A5 and B5 connection for external e-stop) and more green lights show up... but still not able to power on the motors, I also only heard a relay click on momentarily from the safety board. I checked the relays on the safety board for bad contacts but still no luck.

The solution: after tracing the wires 579 and 580 (i think) from the safety board to the rectifier board below, and trying to measure if there was a signal there when pushing the RUN button, suddenly IT WORKED! There must have been a bad contact between the wire and the contact jaws on the backside of the connector, and when messing around with the wires the contact must have been restored.

Conclusion: Check your wires! It might look like a sound connection, but after 30 years and often years of storage, it might not be.