Hi @sberesfo, 

Posted by: @sberesfo

The icon in the upper right corner is brown orange color.

Yes, this shows the connection is not yet established to SOLO, as when you connect to it correctly, the plug sign will turn Green, so are you sure you see it as a COM port when it's connected to your PC in Device Manager?

To make sure about that, pls connect SOLO to your PC and power it up, then check your device manager and you should see sth like the image below attached.

You can get and install the latest version of Windows Driver for USB of SOLO from here.

Once you downloaded the driver, just Unzip it and go inside of the folder, then right-click on “usb_dev_serial.inf” and select install. This will install the device driver for you, and after power recycling SOLO, you’ll see a new COM port will appear on your device manager under the name of “TivaWare USB serial port” associated with SOLO.

Also, it will be good to have a look at this thread about how to activate the serial port on Chrome for the first time.

**Beside all, make sure PIN NO#3 of the Piano switch is always UP before power-up( unless you want to update the firmware as it's not the case here).

I will remain available for further clarifications.

Regards
Milad

@milad

I am unable to install the usb_dev_serial.inf as you suggested. Please see attached.

@milad

I did enable the experimental feature within Chrome. That went fine.

@sberesfo Ok, good.

Posted by: @sberesfo

I am unable to install the usb_dev_serial.inf as you suggested. Please see attached.

That windows driver to be honest is not mandatory to be installed, because Windows automatically recognizes the COM port of SOLO, although the driver is tested on Windows 10 multiple times. let me know if you see any COM port for SOLO when you connect it to your PC.

I see you put the thread as a "solved" matter, so just to double-check, the issue was the chrome experimental feature?

I will remain available.

Regards
Milad

sorry, I thought you put it as solved, so can you share what you see in the Device manager of your windows for the COM port of SOLO?

what happens when you click on the "Plug" sign in Motion Terminal?

You can see in this video how I get connected to Motion Terminal at 2:28.

* it seems you are using windows 7, so for the driver installation maybe you can use a manual method as mentioned below if your windows don't recognize the COM port:

https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/228/

I will remain available.

Regards
Milad

@milad

Thank you for your help. We are still unable to establish a connection. Yes, I am using Windows 7. Attached you can see a screenshot of my device manager.

When I click the "plug" a window opens that says Communication port com1 paired. I select this text and click connect and i get this message  The latest version of Firmware is the V006. Please update it for a better user experience, to get the updater tool please contact us.

I am not sure what you are asking us to do with the link to tp-link.com. There are many files when we go to this link.

Thank you,

Scott

Hi @sberesfo,

seems all is good with your system, but still, I have some doubts :

"COM1" in lots of PCs is used for printer ports or internal devices, so as I see your presumed SOLO's COM port is detected as COM1, so two things:

1- Do you see COM1 disappearing when you disconnect SOLO from your PC? and appearing when you connect it back?

2- Can you manually set another COM port for SOLO and see if you can get connected to it, The steps are shown in an image below, so basically in Device manager you need to:

• double click on the COM port detected ( COM1 in your case)
• go to port settings tab
• go to advanced
• select another COM port that is not in use
• select OK
• Recycle the power of SOLO or connect disconnect the USB cable from it

it's a good chance that "COM1" is either occupied by another application or it's not really SOLO.

I also see that you have a USB device with an unknown Driver, that can be SOLO too!

so if you failed to connect to SOLO doing the above steps probably COM1 is not associated with SOLO, now we need to try to install this older version of our USB driver which most probably will work on Windows 7. I put the file in the attachement, Similar to what mentioned before, pls right-click on "usb_dev_serial.inf" and select install, lets see this time you succeed.

Posted by: @sberesfo

I am using Windows 7.

unfortunately, this is the first time we are getting this news using windows 7, as most probably windows 10 is dominating, but no problem at all.

Posted by: @sberesfo

I am not sure what you are asking us to do with the link to tp-link.com. There are many files when we go to this link.

That link just shows how to set up manually on windows 7 any device driver, so you just need to ignore their files and use our file instead, so if you failed to install the driver by selecting "install" on the "usb_dev_serial.inf" you need to try a new method as below:

Assuming that the unknown USB controller that you have is actually SOLO, by following the link I gave you (tplink), in step 8 select the driver path I gave you and see if you can install it like that ( ignore steps 9 onward). this will be the third attempt to solve this issue. Hopefully, in either of the 1st or 2nd attempts, you can set the system up. 

it will be also great if you can check this issue on a platform with Windows 10.

Pls let me know the results.

Regards
Milad

@milad

We still cannot connect.

I do not see COM1 disapearing when I disconnect SOLO from your PC.

I tried to install the driver file that you provided. Please see attached screenshot.

Hi @sberesfo,

Posted by: @sberesfo

I do not see COM1 disapearing when I disconnect SOLO from your PC.

Ok, this means COM1 is not for SOLO.

Posted by: @sberesfo

I tried to install the driver file that you provided. Please see attached screenshot.

 

I see the progress in your image, that TI USB port is for SOLO, it's not actually installed well for some unknown reason...

so now we are going to install on one of our machines a windows 7 and replicate your case and see what happens...

but till then for your last test pls also do the followings:

May be you need to put your windows in Test mode to be able to install the driver correctly, so Pls do:

1. Uninstall the Driver you've already installed ( right click on TI USB serial port and uninstall it fully)
2. open "Command prompt" as an administrator ( Press Windows key+R to open “Run” box. Type “cmd” and then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open an administrator Command Prompt)
3. type : bcdedit /set testsgining on 
4. restart your PC
5. after restart you should see the TEST Mode appearing
6. Install the drivers I gave you ( pls install them one by one and check which one works, the legacy or the first one)
7. Pls note, each time you install a driver, if it didn't work, pls uninstall it and install the next one
8. check the COM port installed if they don't have that alarm sign
9. if you solved the issue you can go out of test mode with typing " bcdedit /set testsgining off " in command prompt as an admin and restart your PC.

Pls update us for the results, we will also try to check the situation on a windows 7 machine soon.

Regards
Milad

hello @milad

I tried installing both driver files, new and old, one at a time, while in windows safe mode with no success.

I will wait for your reply.

Thank you, Scott

Hi @sberesfo, 

We tried the device driver on a Windows 7 machine and we could successfully install the Driver for the COM port there and also running the Motion Terminal, so here are the steps, but before that make sure you uninstall all the drivers you've installed up to now and restart your PC, so we want to do a fresh installation as below:

1. Keep connected SOLO to your PC while it's powered up
2. Go to Device manager
3. Identify the driver with Alert ( in our case it was written Virtual COM port, for you, it seems it is Universal Serial Bus Controller )
4. 
5. Right-click on that and select "Update Driver software"
6. Select Browse My computer for Driver software
7. Then browse to the directory containing the drivers, the folder is called “COM_SOLO_drivers” and it contains the file and folders ( download the driver from here)
   
   
8. Run the Installation
9. After the installation, the driver should be installed
   
10. 
11. Now Restart your PC, and Recycle the power of SOLO ( turn OFF/ ON)
12. Check the Motion terminal and it should be able to communicate with the board.

Let us know if this could solve the issue.

Regards
Milad

@milad

Unfortunately, this did not work. Please see attachment.

Hi @sberesfo,

sorry for that, but this seems very strange, the main reason is the driver is a signed driver from "Microsoft" by "Texas Instruments", and it's tested on numerous systems without any issue, and as you see last day we checked it explicitly on a windows 7 machine and it worked flawlessly, this makes me think that either your system having some issues with installing drivers or it's blocking them somehow or there are other issues somewhere else, so we need to go back to basics again as below:

1. Are you sure the USB cable you are using has data lines? a lot of USB cables out there are used for charging devices and they only have power lines which is not useful for sending and receiving data through USB, you must make sure your cable has data lines physically wired in it. ( pls verify this before anything else)
2. on SOLO, do you see "E2" Led blinking when you power it up? ( it must keep blinking as it's a sign of normal activity)
3. What happens in your Device manager when you disconnect/connect SOLO ( always keep SOLO powered up with at least 8V)? can you share with me a screenshot of the before and after connection in your Device Manager?
4. Do you see any "Virtual COM port" similar to our case in your device manager? you should install the driver for that, maybe we are installing the driver for the wrong device, maybe that alarming "Universal Serial Bus" thing is not SOLO...
5. Do you have any other system that you can test this process with? we need to make sure where is the issue? (the system, cable, SOLO, ....)

So pls verify the mentioned steps above and let me know how is the situation.

Regards
Milad

Greetings @milad

Problem solved!

I want to thank you for all your help. I did try 2 different USB cables yesterday. Today I tried some different cables and that did solve my problem! ? ? 

Last night I did a screen share with our computer support person and we spent 2 hours trying to get it to work. Maybe if he was here in person he would have thought to try different USB cables. The good news is he upgraded many of my drivers and some software. 

Maybe we learned that it is good to go back to the basics?? 

Thank you again....Scott