I moved to a new workshop and finally got my CNC assembled. During testing, while moving the Z up, the connection between the Blackbox and PC died and I haven't been able to get it to connect again. Tried new USB cables, a different PC, resetting the Blackbox (don't know the actual reset instructions, pressed the button for 10 secs) but nothing worked. The USB connection select in OB Control just shows /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttYS1 etc, but not the port it actually uses. Then I hooked up my old controller board and everything worked. With the old board I did notice that there's some electric disturbance going on, where turning on the spindle motor causes the connection to die - so it might be that some disturbance fried the Blackbox? I opened it but couldn't see anything that looked abnormal. The box starts and powers the motors, the USB light is solid red - can't remember if it's supposed to be like that while connecting? Forgot one thing - I did run the machine for an hour or so without issues before this happened.
Sounds like something took it out. Look for shorts (been in use a while so chaffed cables or loose terminals)
Depends what you find. But it doesn't look good. I assume you worked through all the steps that the onscreen error message (with a documentation link) in CONTROL advised you to?
I removed all the connections from the BB after the incident but still couldn't get to respond. Does the red light in the USB led tell something about the issue?
Not really, those are just red for transmit, green for receive - red doesn't always mean bad/danger/etc Yeah if its damaged its damaged, but its critically important to When you find what could have caused the damage, we can think about it and see what options are available. We already know its been hit, the question is WHAT A short on an endstop, or a power supply surging, or a VFD that backfed the control signal with mains voltage - just three possible examples, but as you can guess, all very different things damaged in turn
Checked all the cables last night, nothing looked out of place, worn or loose. I did test it with the old controller board (XPro v4) and noticed that there's some/a lot electric disturbances coming from the router. But when the BB got hit the router wasn't on. All the components were left unused and stored in sub-optimal conditions for a year or so (damp, cold) so that probably has something to do with it. Anyways I'm ordering a bunch of ferrite rings and grounding the vacuum hose etc.
Bad conditions might have caused corrosion. So sounds like you are happy to proceed with ordering a new one
