Gearbox
I am absolutely upset and wish I had never upgraded the software or the firmware for my ez-b board. I am trying to make the boxbot with my daughter for her science fair and all the images, controls and everything have changed. Ho do I revert this back to the older versions? This is horrible. I spent 400 dollars on this product 2 years ago and now that I have a daughter who is excited to learn about them and is now old enough to use this product, I cant use it the way I use to because of updates. Why would you have it available to update the older version to work with the newer stuff if you have to have the other board to make things work. I refuse to pay another 400 dollars or even 200 dollars to get all new stuff when this is going to happen again in 2 years. I realize you have to update and get new things, but this should have allowed me to work with all my old projects or there should be a way to get this to work. What can I possibly do at this point. I have 2 weeks before my daughters science fair and I was relying on this to work. Any ideas? DJ, do you have any thoughts? You use to answer forum issues all the time. What should I do at this point? Is my product useless at this point? Any help would be appreciated.
Welcome back @Gearbox Yes things have certainly changed in 2 years. All is not lost, although ARC has been re-skinned to support our newer ez-bv4 product all the functionality to use the v3 is still available in the latest version. All the ports are the same number, D0 on the v4 is D0 on the v3, you just don't have D20-D24 available on the v3. All the old tutorials on YouTube are also still relevant
If still you are interested in previous versions, please check out this thread: https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/4879
Thank you for your prompt response. I guess my question is how do I get it to work correctly with the new software? All the pictures of the board and settings are so different, I just want it the way it use to be. I have an old version still with the boxbot I had working 2 years ago, but how do I get it to work with what I have now. It just keeps saying I have to upgrade the software on my other system. I would rather use the older version but since I upgraded the firmware it wont work until I upgrade the software to the latest version. If I do that all the settings for the old version go away and everything is all the new stuff.
Just to clarify, you are saying that you updated your v3's firmware with the firmware updater to be the newest 16.6 version? You are looking for a way to downgrade your firmware on the v3 in order to have it work with an older version of ARC?
Well I didn't think it was possible, but I was able to do it. I downloaded an old version of ARC from Rich's dropbox account, uninstalled the latest version of ARC, installed version 2012.11.18.00 from 2 years ago, used the firmware updater and downgraded the v3 firmware to version 16 instead of 16.6.
Who knew ARC was so versatile :)
Wait, I have old versions of ARC still in my dropbox? I thought I deleted those :)
My Archive
@Rich - do you have a cross reference sheet to the files you have, so we would know which version (1), (2), (3), etc is?
Nope. My guess is the date stamps would be close to, if not the same as the ARC release dates but it's a guess and I have no desire to work it out.
Ok I figured this all out. It is a little painful still and would like the images back since I am trying to teach a 10 year old how to use it. I was able to find everything like you said just wish it wasn't all setup for the new stuff. The only thing I can't get to work now is the voice control for the robot. It is showing through the mic control that it can hear me but nothing happens. Any thoughts? I sure do appreciate all your help. I was getting extremely frustrated. If o can get this voice control to work that would be great.
Every control has a ? (Question mark) next to the X (close). Press that on the Speech Recognition to obtain help for that control. You will find information on how to train the computer for your voice.
@Gearbox You spent $400 two years ago for an ezb3 developer's kit? Did I read that correctly? Where did you buy it from? Well no wonder you're upset, EZ Robot sold these kits here for I think around $169.00... The current developer's kit is only $229...
Without progress we would all still be living in caves... If companies don't create new stuff (yes that may mean old products get sacrificed) then they die... EZ Robot has to move on from the V3 in order to continue to prosper... Every other company does the same thing so it is nothing to be upset or frustrated about...
By the way, the EZB3 is not obsolete yet (it still works with the current version of ARC)... Stick with it, you'll get it working...
So just try and enjoy teaching your daughter the awesomeness of robotics... :)
Thank you all for your help. I have made significant progress in getting things to work. I still haven't figured out the picture thing for the ezb v3 when connecting the wires, it still shows the new picture but I have everything but voice working. I will check what your saying DJ and see if I can get it to work. I am glad I was able to figure out how to get this to work and happy that this product still works with the new stuff. Thank you again all for your help.
I also have the EZ-Bv3+. I Upgraded the firmware successfully on COM4 via Bluetooth. When I try to connect it times out immediately. Any help.
You can try the second COM port that was installed. Sometimes it seemed that the firmware could be installed on one COM port and it then communicated on the other. The only other recommendation I could offer is to power cycle the board.
Power cycle did it. thanks for the quick response