ESS not communicating with the computer

I have been using the ESS smooth stepper on my machine for about 6 months or so. Lately, I experienced a crash on my machine and I had to perform an E-stop on all my electronics in the middle of a job. After checking the machine the next day the spindle and spindle motor appeared okay, and all the diagnostic lights on the electronic parts came on without a problem. Also, it sounded as though all of the motors powered when I supplied power to them. However, when I loaded Mach4 the ESS did not communicate with Mach. I attempted all of the potential fixes listed on Warp9td's website, but I never got the ESS to respond, even though all of LEDs appeared to indicate it was working properly. It's not the ethernet cable and I repeatedly tried reconfiguring the board but I was never able to get the ESS to respond. Usually when the connection is successfully made the green light starts flickering rapidly, but I was never able to get it to connect. Whenever I run the configurator (and I made sure that Mach and SCU were closed while running it), the best I could get was the ESS device to display under "listening for smooth stepper", but the IP address on the device was listed as *.*.*.*.* even though I had attempted to set it both automatically as well as manually. Initially, I received an error code and suggestion to remove the jumper from JP1, but there was no jumper connected. Then I attempted the fix suggested on Warp9td's website to run the configurator while the jumper was connected. All of those attempts failed to cause the ESS to connect. I also went through the option of restoring the Windows Firewall defaults and then followed the configuration process that automatically sets up Windows to allow Mach3 & Mach4 to bypass the firewall, but I was still unsuccessful. Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be, and how to diagnose it?

I would start by testing the ethernet card itself by sending a constant ping to the ip address from a command prompt type "ping -t ipaddress"
If this test okay I would then check the cable between the ESS and the Card

If these test all pass you may have a faulty ESS

Thanks for your help!!!! I will give them a try.

I’m wondering, also, if the WiFi dongle could have intercepted the IP address b/c support @ Warp9TD asked me if I get internet on that computer.




QUOTE=squirrel_41;2252288]I would start by testing the ethernet card itself by sending a constant ping to the ip address from a command prompt type "ping -t ipaddress"
If this test okay I would then check the cable between the ESS and the Card

If these test all pass you may have a faulty ESS[/QUOTE]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gallen66

Thanks for your help!!!! I will give them a try.

I’m wondering, also, if the WiFi dongle could have intercepted the IP address b/c support @ Warp9TD asked me if I get internet on that computer.




QUOTE=squirrel_41;2252288]I would start by testing the ethernet card itself by sending a constant ping to the ip address from a command prompt type "ping -t ipaddress"
If this test okay I would then check the cable between the ESS and the Card

If these test all pass you may have a faulty ESS

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[/QUOTE]

First check your IP address of your ethernet card(NIC).
Since by default, the ESS IP address is set to 10.9.9.9.....
Make sure the NIC address is Manually set to anything else i.e.10.9.9.1
Make the NIC address is not set to Automatic or DCHP
If this is done correctly, the Wifi dongle should affect it!
As for the Firewall, for testing...turn it off!!

Good Luck

Not sure about this but it's a thought. Maybe the crash caused some settings to be mismatched.
Ie... ip address and things such as that. Perhaps a hard reset of ip setting on the smoothstepper board are in order. I remember reading about the config jumper on the board being able to do that. Have you tried researching that option?