Software stoped working with shield v1.3.3

Hi, having first used the shield v1.3.3 on a arduino 2560 R3 with magnetic sensor AS5600 and small 12v gimball motor mitoot, i was first able to get working with the software utils and do the various tests. But since the simplfoc shield v2 came out and new software replaced the old version i can no longer get the serial monitor to accept my in-put with any of the software examples. I can get examples to run as far as going through setup, the motor moves and then waits for my in-put, but when i try to in-put a position, nothing happens.
So does this mean that old simplefoc shields are now redundant because the software is now so different.?
I am only a newbe and i cannot make sense of what is supposed to be happening. More better instruction would be useful explaining what changes in software to make and why they are made would be useful.
I also note that the useful commenting out of various code choices to setup sensors has been removed on many examples. This has made things much harder to understand and impossible to debug not knowing what is required.

Haha I love the name @2frustrated.

Have you read the docs about the commander?
Commander Interface | Arduino-FOC

Commander interface was developed to replace motor commands and it is much more flexible and much more powerful interface to run and configure your motors and any other variables in you arduino program.

In most of examples the only change in v2.1, regarding the serial communication, is that now you need a ‘command’ letter that you associated your motor/target with before you send the position/velocity/torque.
Before you’ve just sent

2

Now you’ll send

T2

Where T is defined in the setup in the commander:

command.add('T', doTarget, "target")

If you’re not sure which one of the letters you defined in the code you can send a command ?

?
T: target

I know it is tempting to just use the code as is and not read the docs but i would really encourage you to spend some time reading them at least the parts that are related to your setup.

No, any board that was supported in the earlier versions will work with this one as well.

I’m trying to spend as much time as I can in writing the docs. The docs are really the best guide you have for the simplefoc. They are written in a way that should not be too complicated or too dull. But i agree that more instruction videos would be good to have. Bit at the moment the time is the biggest constraint. :slight_smile:

Can you elaborate a bit more on that. I’d like to know which ones did you find useful and I’ll be happy to reintroduce them to the code.

But i would really like to stress once again, please do go through the docs. The idea is really that you write your own code, not that you use the example code as the finished product. The examples are just the examples.

Hi,Thanks for the extensive reply. I did take a quick look at the commander but did not study in great detail as i was not sure how relevant it was. I will now take your advice and look at it again in greater detail and come back to you how successful i have been. I`ll also reply with the other questions you asked, it may take awhile but i will come back to you one way or the other.
Many Thanks.

Hi. Well i took another look at using the commander and i have managed to get it running. Where i was going wrong was not using upper case when typing letters, i did not know it was case sensitive.
I have managed to use many of the main commands but some of them are still trouble some, one of them is the ? as it does not do anything but im not too bothered with them at the moment, for the time being the ones i want to use i can get working. Regarding the commenting out. I refer to the blocks of code that select : eg. which sensor, encoder, hall sensor, magnetic. using spi or I2c etc.. Well it appears that the magnetic with I2c which i was using has been removed from all the examples which made things very troublesome in the beginning, i am ok now as i have worked it out, but i wasted a lot of time finding out what was needed to be added, but just as important was knowing what code was required to be REMOVED to enable the program to work. Well it would be very helpful (for beginners) if you could put the various different hardware capabilities in blocks/sections of code and head them accordingly instructing the beginner to comment in/ out the relevant blocks of code associated with the hardware being used, or not. It would also be helpful to increase the instructions in the code as well. Unfortunately i cant forward the helpful examples as these new ones all lack the useful code using the magnetic I2c, they all have the spi code instead, which need all references to be removed throughout the example code to enable to get working.
So to a beginner it is just as useful knowing what is NOT required in code as it is knowing what is required.
Many Thanks for your help.

Can you point us to what you think is missing from i2c examples? This one seems to have i2c in it

Hi. Thanks for the reply, that code you have there is what i first downloaded and found helpful set out as is. It is not the example with missing code. With the above code all one has to do is chose which hardware to use by taking out the // and making the relevant code active. I think this method of choosing pre made code to be the most helpful. Perhaps this method could be expanded for other code choices and used in all examples as some examples only have the magnetic spi code in, or just the encoder code, such as the single_full_control_example.
I dont know if the example bldc_driver_3pwm_standalone has missing code as it has not got the line of code identifying how many poll pairs to use.
Thanks.