Lost PyMakr in VSCode

[jand]

@paul-thornton Yes, these are work laptops. I don't think the IT department has attached an internal chip. But I cannot know that for sure.
I have not modified the LoPy4's firmware since I bought it a few weeks ago.
The random junk is not the only strange thing. Other things are very puzzling too.

I worked with old laptop 'A' with expansion board V2.1A and with an older Lopy4 and a lopy quite intensively over the past year or so (in VS Code with pymakr). It always worked except for one interruption for a few days that was also due to an upgrade of VS code that required an update in pymakr as well).

So i am not sure anymore if the trouble is due to the January update of VS Code or due to the new extension board & Lopy4.

[crumble]

@jand said in Lost PyMakr in VSCode:

@paul-thornton Yes, these are work laptops. I don't think the IT department has attached an internal chip. But I cannot know that for sure.

The Rugged latitude series may have a GPS on board. But I think that Dell will write correct sentences onto the virtual serial.

If it is a project notebook, someone may have installed a virtual GPS to replay recorded test data.

I blame the dfu driver on the Win 7 machine. The expansion board 2 has no PIC, so the dfu driver shall not interferre.

Will the pycom update tool, cmd line or a terminal program find your devices?
Have you connected something to the firmware update pin?

[jand]

@crumble and @Paul-Thornton: I swapped to Atom, and it turns out pymakr in VSCode and Atom show exactly the same behavior: on a new Dell Lattitude laptop running Windows 10, I can connect to all my lopy4 and lopy devices through the expansion boards (V2.1A and V3.1) that I have (with USB cable). But on an old Dell Latitude running Windows 7, I cannot connect to any of them (not with Atom, not with VS Code). That is strange because up to recently that is the laptop I always used to connect to my pycom boards. It was always on COM13, and that port is no longer visible ('List Serial Ports'). Instead COM3 and COM5 now show up, but one cannot connect to them.

I believe the trouble started when I started using a new lopy4 with a new expansion board V3.1. Does such an expansion board load up any driver when you first connect it? Or anything else that is not compatible anymore with Windows7? Or did I just lost a COM-port driver without knowing, and is there a way to install again the driver needed to connect to the expansion boards via USB?

[Paul Thornton]

@jand said in Lost PyMakr in VSCode:

I believe the trouble started when I started using a new lopy4 with a new expansion board V3.1. Does such an expansion board load up any driver when you first connect it? Or anything else that is not compatible anymore with Windows7? Or did I just lost a COM-port driver without knowing, and is there a way to install again the driver needed to connect to the expansion boards via USB?

Nothing that would make it echo out GPS data, Without a pytrack attached we dont actually have anything that could possibly achieve that.

What does device manager say you have in terms of com ports and unidentified usb devices?

[jand]

@paul-thornton These are the devices shown in the device manager (. When I update them, I get the message that all are up to date.

[Paul Thornton]

@jand Well. That explains why we have GPS messages coming out of COM5. It was indeed a laptop based GPS card. COM3 is something else internal to the Dell. COM1 doesnt look right either not sure windows is detecting the expansion board at all at this point.

Do the lights on that expansion board light up when its connected to the PC?

[robert-hh]

@jand I just looked into the DELL laptop I have in front of me, and it has the same GPS port. Obviously, the GSM modem also has a GPS receiver integrated, and that one is delivering NMEA sequences. I have definitely no PyCom device attached at the moment.

[Paul Thornton]

In terms of drivers we do offer them for windows 7, but anything windows 8 and above should work out of the box:
https://docs.pycom.io/pytrackpysense/installation/drivers.html

[crumble]

@jand

have a look into the device manager. Your device my be disabled for some reason. You have to check the option for showing unconnected hardware.

And dont't forget to check, if other devices can connect at the same port.

[jand]

@crumble and @Paul Thornton
Switching on 'show hidden devices' in the Device manager (Windows 7) did not reveal anything new. Only COM1, Dell COM3 and Dell COM5 showed up (see screenprint in earlier post).

What finally worked to solve my problem is to install the driver file pycom.inf downloaded from https://github.com/pycom/pycom-micropython-sigfox/blob/master/docs/pycom_esp32/tutorial/includes/downloads/pycom.inf from within the device manager (Action >> Add Legacy Hardware >> Search for and install the hardware automatically >> Ports (COM & LPT) >> Have disk >> Browse to pycom.inf file). I installed the 'Expansion 3' option. That installed the expansion board 3 driver, but it showed an error in the device manager (device cannot start). But when I next connected an expansion board V3.1 (with lopy4) to the laptop with usb, a new COM port ('Expansion 3 COM 19') appeared in the device manager, and this one allows me to connect from Atom. Also an Expansion board V2.1A with a lopy can now be connected.

So problem solved. Although I still do not know what caused the connection problem. Auto connect does still not work because the working driver is at the bottom of the serial devices list, and the auto-connect takes the first one in the list, that one does not work. But anyway, PROBLEM SOLVED, I can connect manually by selecting the right COM port. Thanks for all the help!