Panda III Serial debugging

NETMF & Gadgeteer
1

Hi,
I’ve searching around quite a bit regarding this topic, but can’t find any helpful Infos.
How do setup the Panda III for serial deploy/debug? I want to use it as CDC device …

As far as I understand I need an FTDI cable, but to which pins to I have to connect the serial port wires on the Panda and what else do I have to setup? The user manual say nothing regarding this topic.
Thanks for any help…

2

@ mahony -

How do setup the Panda III for serial deploy/debug?
This is the standard USB cable (Mini connector by the LDR0 button).
//You need the GHI drivers installed for the Universal Serial Bus devices.
Poor wording on my part for the line above:

See Capture.gif image
See https://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/230/netmf-processor-setup
Read Connecting to the PC

For a COM1 serial port to the PC.
Using a USB FTDI 3.3V cable for serial. (PC using Tera Term)
Pin
1 Black Ground To 8 pin header GND
(Arrow Mark on connector)
2 Brown CTS# (Not used)
3 Red VCC (+5V) (Not used)
4 Orange TXD To 8 pin header COM1 RX D0
5 Yellow RXD To 8 pin header COM1 TX D1
6 Green RTS# (Not used)

3

Thank you very much! That helps a lot!

Is there nothing else on the Panda III to do? I thought I need to ground some PIN or something else.

4

the MODE pin. Tie MODE to GND.

5

Thank you I had something in my mind, but wasn’t sure.
FTDI cable arrived today - hope to get to playing now… :wink:

1 Like
6

good luck with the tinkering!

Just a tip, start with USB debugging and move to serial debug. First test your FTDI cable with a simple serial test app to make sure you get that working before you step off into serial debugging :slight_smile: It would be hard to diagnose if you have UART Dyslexia or not unless you have working diagnostics.

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7

Thanks for the tips, I already played some time with USB debug/deploying (Controlling Servos via PWM), now I want to move on and command the Panda from a PC where to move the servos - thats why I wanted to get serial Debugging on and use CDC for PC <-> Panda communication.

FTDI seems to work - using one of the CDC example I get “Hello World!” on COM5 on the PC regular :wink: The only Problem I’ve seen so far is that if the data sent by the Panda is not ‘consumed’ on the PC after a while there is an exception thrown. But that should be no big issue to handle.

1 Like