Resolved by Dunning-Kruger!
I recently purchased a EZ4 board and I was anxious to use it. I went through two cables (mini din to molex) both of them traced correctly but yet I got nothing when I went into ARC.
The camera functioned (although it appears to only take up half the image window), I could connect to the web server no problem, but not the Roomba (although it acted like it wanted to connect).
In your pin out you have two pins being used one is ground and one is sending 5 volts (pin 3) to the create. Which confuses me because the directions make note to measure the voltage coming from the cable however I believe pin 3 SENDS to the Roomba not receives, am I misunderstanding?
My last attempt I took a PS2 cable put a meter lead on the pins you mentioned and then on the bare wire, until I had a complete connection. I attached those two to a molex connector with servo wire double checked the connections and still nada.
Help? stress tired
Or, possibly a virtual serial port that maps a computer USB serial port to a WiFi TCP/IP address and port that is wired to the Roomba / Create SCI port.
I'm not sure why a 7-pin vs. 8-pin mini-din plug would matter. The only difference is the the center pin. I only ordered the 8 because it was cheaper and quicker to get one. Anyway, apart from that I said in my last post I was taking the two wires directly into the Roomba and getting the same result.
I've only tried controlling it from the Roomba control panel in ARC on D0. I really want to get this working for my 9 year old son. It's a good entry point for him and it was why I bought the EZ-B to begin with. It was the main reason I bought the it and I won't be a happy camper if I can't get it working.
Anyway, UPS just arrived with my 8-pin plug, so i'm going to go fire up the soldering iron and see if that helps.
The best way to do it to test is jumper wire. Get a couple peices and just put them in the Roomba plug and the other side in d0. I am building some new bots with my own boards and I've found it's the best way and also recommended by irobot too for quick testing.
The other option would be to take a servo cable and put one end on D0 and two of the wires (leave one off for now as it's not used -- white), and simply put the bare wire ends into the din plug.
This way you make sure it's not your plug or your solder, etc.
As an example I have an Arduino wired to a buck transformer and then directly into the Roomba for power and the digital ports are just jumper wires at present (until I make a cable). I of course have other items to contend with (eg: power increase during charging of the Roomba, keeping the signal alive, etc)
When connecting a servo cable to the Roomba SCI, only use the Black ( pin 7 GND) and White (pin 3 REC). Take the Red lead and cut it so that it cannot be used.
I've tried the bare wire approach. Still the same results with two different servo wires (and yes the red middle lead is removed). The new din plug I wired up also had same result.
I see from the EZ-Bv4 datasheet that D0 is an unregulated power port and is a change from EZ-Bv3. Is it possible that the 3.3v port is need to work properly and if so is there a way to use the A7 port instead? It doesn't seem like ARC is setup to let you use the Roomba on anything but D0.
@todd85 ARC can use one of the hardware serial port to communicate with the Roomba via scripts, as I mentioned this will be more reliable than D0.
D0 is a 3.3V signal, the power ports beside it are unregulated. If you were to use D5 & D6 you will likely have better results, although you will not have access to the ARC Roomba control anymore.
Like I said before I'm really looking for a way to enable to visual tools in ARC to get my 9 year old son going. Jumping right into programming probably isn't going to be the best way for him to start.
Why is that D5 & D6 would have better results? Are there known problems with ARC Roomba tools not working due to being on port D0?
@todd85 Ports 5 and 6 are UART port 1... you would use UART commands instead of sendSerial.... Like I said, I have zero issues with controlling my Create 2 and Roombas... I am Using UART port 0 (dedicated port black female header beside the I2c ports).... However, any of the 3 UART ports will work...
I wrote this for testing my 500/600/700 series Roombas... Guaranteed to work if everything is wired correctly... It uses pin D5 (UART port 1) instead of pin D0.... Run the Init script before using any of the other controls Roomb500_Test.EZB