Saving the configuration¶
Nothing you set survives a power cycle until you save it.
Saving writes the configuration to the EEPROM: the motor parameters and the calibration, every gain and limit, the CAN node ID (and the bootloader's board ID with it), the heartbeat and watchdog settings, the thermistor and LED settings and the gripper flag. Over CAN, Send_Save_config does the same. Save after calibration, after tuning, and after changing the node ID.
Some settings are not kept and start from their defaults at every power-up: the current loop bandwidth (#Cbw,
500 Hz), the idle behaviour (#Brake / #Coast or Send_Settings: brake), and the open-loop and calibration
settings (#Openv, #Opens, #Vp, #Iqoffset, #microstep, #stepinterval). The
Defaults reference marks each setting.
A saved watchdog runs from power-up
With a watchdog saved (Send_Watchdog), the driver starts its count at power-up. A host that sends no motion frame or status request within the watchdog time finds the driver in watchdog error, and clears it with Send_Clear_Error. See Over CAN.
The serial number
This firmware does not read the serial number back from the EEPROM at power-up: #SERNUM reports 1 until it
is set, and every save writes the value held in RAM over the stored one.
The defaults¶
Restoring the defaults writes the factory values to the EEPROM and reloads them. It also sets the CAN node ID to
0 and the thermistor to off, resets the serial number, the hardware version and the batch date stored in the
EEPROM, and clears the gripper flag, the heartbeat rate and the watchdog. Note the hardware version and batch date
#Info prints before you use it, and give the driver its node ID again afterwards. The defaults are listed in the
Defaults reference.
Use it before the first calibration of a motor, after a firmware update when the driver behaves oddly, and when
the state shows nonsense values (a -1 where a number should be). With firmware 106 and newer that should not
happen: the driver checks the stored configuration at power-up and replaces a damaged block with the defaults by
itself.
What the driver reports¶
The state Motor GUI shows is what is in the EEPROM and what the driver measures. In a terminal it takes three
commands: #Info prints the hardware and firmware version, the CAN ID, the calibration state and the motor
parameters (pole pairs, resistance, inductance, Kt and KV); #Param prints the gains and limits; #Error the
active errors. They are the first thing to look at when something is off, and the thing to copy into a bug
report.
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