Once I could connect my USB to the mini USB of the OpenCM board I wanted to try my first program on the Arduino-like board. I installed the OpenCM library for Linux and took one of the included examples, compiled it and tried to download it to the board (download means copying from the PC to the board). ERROR! The download failed. Good start!

I searched for information and I found that you can force the download by pressing a tiny button on the controller when connecting the USB to the PC. I did so, a LED stayed green as it should, I tried to download and… ERROR again!

Then I decided to just check the other functions to see if the “rest” was working. I connected with the app and tried to move the robot, but it was not reacting. So now I have a 300€ brick, great…

No other solution that to switch to windows. On windows I expect to have more luck because I can use 3 pieces of software from Robotis that are not available for Linux: R+ Motion, R+ Task (to program motions and sequence of motions, called tasks) and RPlus. First, I tried to download a program using the OpenCM library on windows. Again, error. Then I tried to connect R+ motion or task to the robot: again error. It seems to be a problem of the USB communication.

Ok, let’s clean the mess. Next step: reset the board to its initial state using RPlus. But to reset the board I need to connect with the USB, and this seems to not work… Finally, I could reset the board using RPlus by using a different USB port on my computer. I repeated and tested different configurations, to be sure: it looks like only one USB works, and not always.

Finally, and just to be sure I still have the cool demo moves, I reinstalled the original motions that come with the robot. When resetting the board they had got deleted. I downloaded the motion file and wanted to send it with R+ motion, but the connection was impossible. I need to connect over the bluetooth.

The bluetooth connection was not working because I needed to change the settings of the bluetooth service so that new devices could be added. Once I figure out that, adding the device and connecting to it was easy. Then, loading the old moves was also easy. Now, everything is like at the beginning.

From now on, I know what to do if I program the OpenCM board and I want to go back to the initial state: go to windows, plug the board to the first USB (closest to the screen) while pressing the button on the board, reset to initial state using RPlus, connect via bluetooth with R+ motion and load the old motion file.

Next time, first steps on an on-board program to read commands from the USB, send them to the motors and output motor information over the USB.