Daisy Chaining Two Thunderborgs -> neither detected

Submitted by SRugina on Mon, 01/28/2019 - 16:54

Forums:

Hi everyone,

Recently, we've been trying to daisy chain two thunderborgs to be able to control each wheel individually. However, we followed the instructions here: https://www.piborg.org/blog/thunderborg-getting-started but they did not work. Then we tried to do only one thunderborg from those instructions, but that did not work either (we've tried the solutions described in http://forum.piborg.org/node/2659).

Then, we decided to look at the DiddyBorgv2 instructions, which we assume are guaranteed to work. We noticed that the wiring for a single thunderborg is different in the DiddyBorgv2 instructions (https://www.piborg.org/blog/diddyborg-v2-build-instructions) than the other instructions above. Thus, we assume the wiring in the original thunderborg docs (above) are wrong, implying the daisy chain instructions are also wrong. Two of the two thunderborgs in the daisy chain do not work with the DiddyBorg instructions (but a fresh 3rd thunderborg did work, while not working with the original thunderborg instructions), the first not receiving power at all (but bizarrely the power from the powerpack made it through the thunderborg to the pi, which booted) and the second turned on on a red light (pi booted, i2c not detecting thunderborg).

We fear our thunderborgs may be permanently broken, and would like to know what the correct daisy-chaining setup is as well for the future (as we don't have unlimited budget to spend testing different setups).

Thanks in advance for any help.

piborg's picture

piborg

Tue, 01/29/2019 - 17:07

Daisy chaining multiple ThunderBorgs is easiest using 3-Pin Male/Female Cables as you can connect as many as you want together.

Start by setting each board with its own address by attaching one at a time as explained in the Multiple Boards section on the Getting Started page.

Once they are both setup you can attach the boards as shown below. The first board is the same connections as a single board connected to the Raspberry Pi (cyan and magenta colours). The second board is connected to the first board with the cables crossed over (yellow and green colours). Power should be connected to both ThunderBorgs as well.

Click on the images to view larger versions.

Images: 

SRugina

Fri, 02/01/2019 - 13:05

Hi thanks for the reply, we tried this except we put the cables into the second thunderborg with a female-female which was most likely the issue, and we only connected the power supply to the second thunderborg (also most likely a cause of the issue). However, you say "The first board is the same connections as a single board connected to the Raspberry Pi" however we tried that connection and it did not work, but the diddyborg v2 connection to the raspberry pi for a singleboard did work (a female-female connection). We are running out of budget so we do not want to fry two more thunderborgs, are you sure the instructions you've sent are correct?

Thanks in advance for any help

piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 02/04/2019 - 22:01

The diagram above is correct, connecting just one ThunderBorg using the cyan and magenta connections should work fine.

When connected the ThunderBorg should show a red, green, blue sequence on the LED when power is connected, followed by a colour indicating battery voltage. If this does not happen it may indicate a problem with the 3-pin cables themselves.

SRugina

Mon, 02/04/2019 - 22:13

Hi,

We tested this today, and it worked. Thanks for all your help.

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