eggtimer classic won't connect to computer.

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kzimmerman

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I already contacted Chris about this, but haven't heard from him in a week. That's not really like him, I hope everything is okay.
So I built 2 classic flight computers, both of them turn on and indicate ready status. It will not register with the computer, the program does not come up on the computer. So, something wrong with the classics, bad cable, some software issue or settings maybe? I'm in a little bit over my head, so any help would be appreciated!
 
Sorry, been out at a launch, and I'm still catching up...

1) Did you install the driver for the Prolific PL2303TA chip in the cable directly from the Prolific web site? Do NOT use the one in Windows... it doesn't work.
2) We recommend using Putty. The settings are 19200 baud/8bits/no parity/1 stop bit, and turn off handshaking.

#1 is the most common reason why it won't work...
 
Hey Chris, glad to know you were out at a launch and not in the hospital or something! I downloaded the pl23xx_proific_driverinstaller_v206.zip Is there a better one?
 
Try this: First, change the COM port on the cable to COM2 in Device Manager. COM1-COM4 seem to work best... I've seen Windows assign high-numbered COM ports and Putty refuse to work properly.

Second, short the white and green pins on the cable with a paperclip, bring up Putty on your COM port, then hit a few characters. You should see them on the screen; if not, then you have either an issue with your driver/Putty settings, or a bad cable.

After that, we'll look at the altimeters... but if they're beeping when you power them on, they're probably fine.
 
Okay, I changed the cable to com2, opened putty and shorted the green and white and the characters came up on the screen. learn something new everyday.
It's not likely the altimeters are the problem if both are behaving themselves, right?
 
OK, now connect the cable to the Eggtimer... black to GND, white to TX, green to RX, set Putty to 19200 baud/8 bits/no parity/no handshaking, and power on the Eggtimer. After the first set of beeps hit the ENTER key, and you should see a screen.
 
They work! Thank you so much Chris, you went above and beyond for this. If only every manufacturer had your customer service. Thank you!
 
spoke too soon.......I can get to the flight settings screen, and I can do a master reset, but I cannot change any settings. I can highlight the letter, but can't input any selections. I could before I did the master reset.
 
To change a setting, hit the letter in front of the setting, enter the new value, and hit the ENTER key to go back to the bottom. When you're done, hit the ESC key to save everything (this is the step that people forget).
 
I hit the letter, but cannot change the values. I hit the number, but it will not change from default settings. It's actually frozen now.
 
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So I restarted my computer and I did another master reset. The altimeters both power on and indicate ready status, But I still cannot change the values. I'm assuming that handshaking is flow, right?
 
didn't seem to make a difference. I can highllight the number, but cannot change it. So I hit d and one to change the value from 0 to 1, it stays at 0.
 
I think I’ll try to get my brother to look at it this weekend. He’ll have the advantage of having the whole works to look at. I’ll report back what he finds, whatever it is.
 
So, the solder joints all looked good, inspected under a microscope and he checked for any joints that were loose from cold joints. We connected the altimeters to his computer, and they behaved the same way. He did a lot of things that I don't understand, and my brother doesn't really talk much, so I couldn't really follow everything he did. I know that that is not really helpful. BJ thought that it was curious that both altimeters were behaving the same way, he thought it unlikely that I would make the same mistake twice like that. He spent a lot of time looking at the Atmel ATMega328P-PU processor. I think he thinks that it may have been overheated, as he was talking about soldering a socket onto the board and then mounting the processor. I'm not sure about that, but Bj said that the socket would hold the processor for anything that I'm likely to do. He was involved with the Mercury Redstone project back when they were thinking of resurrecting it when the space shuttle retired, so he is familiar with high G forces. I don't really want the chip in a socket myself, I don't want to add to the height of one of those, I built it with the output transistors flat to fit into a smaller airframe.
I left the altimeters with him, he's going to spend some more time working on them. He did say that he might build one to see what happens if he builds it, maybe he could see what is going on with mine, but I don't know how serious he was about that (again, he doesn't talk!). Is there any words of wisdom that I could pass along Chris?
Thank you for all that you have done Chris, your customer service is outstanding!
 
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