AXE027 USB Cable issues

digone52

New Member
Hi.

We've downloaded the executable to install the driver for the USB cable, but I think that this method of install is at best inconvenient for a large school from what I can see, as you still need to approve the install of the driver as an administrator? We block student accounts from accessing device manager, so I believe that the process is a manual installation on each computer as the local administrator. When you're rolling this driver out to 100 desktops in a school, it's frustrating. Assuming I've got the method of install correct, is there any plan to create a driver installation that once installed will plug-and-play the cable without requiring this manual process?

We are currently building material for a project based on this cable, but we have only one cable as it stands at the moment, as we're just testing. We intend to purchase many more. Are all of the cables identical when plugged in via USB so one AXE027 cable is seen to a computer as identical to another, or when a different AXE027 is plugged in, will it go through the process of plug-and-play again followed by a manual driver install, assuming an earlier install of the driver with a different cable has succeeded?

The cable has a 3.5mm jack plug.

Can I please ask - if this gets plugged into an audio port on the computer, or on another computer, or a phone/MP3 player, could something get damaged? In a secondary school it's bound to happen, and I'd prefer not to test it myself!

Thanks ever so much.
 

SteveDee

Senior Member
The middle of the three connections of the jack plug is TXD. My understanding is that this is normally low (0V) but pulses high (+5V) during data transmission (download). The max current is likely to be less than 20mA, but I can't say if this may damage any specific devices.

You don't have to "approve" different cables in different computers (i.e. that already have the driver installed). But you do have to select the correct port each time a cable is plugged in to a USB socket.

We use Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to deploy OS and applications over hundreds of MS computers. However, I have only had to deploy Picaxe editor and drivers to a handful of computers. The driver deployment always reports an error, but works after subsequent manual intervention on each computer.

Likewise, a teaching staff user (not administrator) has to initially run the software on each computer (just once) before pupils can successfully use the software via their accounts (although I cannot remember why this is, but its probably a registry or config file creation/change issue).

I agree with you that this is not a workable situation if you need to deploy software for dozens (or hundreds) of school computers. So I would also be interested in a better installation method, just in case our Technologies CA decide they want to return to using Picaxe.
 

inglewoodpete

Senior Member
The cable has a 3.5mm jack plug.

Can I please ask - if this gets plugged into an audio port on the computer, or on another computer, or a phone/MP3 player, could something get damaged? In a secondary school it's bound to happen, and I'd prefer not to test it myself!
When my children were young, the 3.5mm stereo plug of the AXE026 cable got plugged into the speaker/headphone jack of the motherboard of my home PC. That output never worked again. My kids are now 19 and 21 and have their own computers. And I have a new motherboard (and computer) but had to use a PCI sound card for many years!

The AXE026 outputs +/- 10 or 12 volts vs the AXE027's TTL levels.

So yes, the speaker/headphone output of an audio device may get damaged. I wouldn't try it!
 
Top