HX3 Remote Application

HX3 Remote

HX3 Remote for Windows is a convenient way to update or maintain your HX3 board or expander. It makes fiddling with Teraterm and AVRdude completely obsolete. You will need an USB adaptor cable FTDI TTL232R 5V or any USB to serial converter based on FTDI chipset.

Most parameter remote functions require HX3 firmware 3.51 and up (as they rely on the new MenuPanel parameter order, but you may also use it for updating older firmwares and FPGA configurations. New controller firmware 3.52 has a provision to engage the bootloader (by serial command "9980=0", but you do not need to know that). Before that, you had to reset the HX3 board by a reset jumper to engage the bootloader and to update the firmware -- not very user-friendly.

Requirements

Connect the FTDI USB cable to your Windows PC. On WinXP, it will ask you to install FTDI drivers first (available at FTDI website). On newer systems, Windows will install drivers for you automatically. Create a new folder on your hard disk and copy all files of Github LATEST directory to your folder, for example "E:\LATEST\". Some PCs will need the D2XX.dll and libusb0.dll as well.

Connect to HX3

Connect header of USB cable to your HX3 board. The "+5V" pin of PL21 should be cut off, otherwise USB power will supply the board which may lead to problems as voltage is too weak. Start HX3_remote.exe by double click. The application is completely self-contained and does not need any installation, but it requires to have the avrdude.exe tool (and maybe the DLLs noted above) in the same folder. HX3_remote may complain that HX3_factory_defaults.hx3 could not be found. Click "Open" to load; it is located in the \LATEST folder. HX3_remote will remember the file last used.

Click on Device button. A dialog window appears whichs asks to select the FTDI USB cable from the FTDI devices it found; normally, it should be named "TTL232R" or similar, and only one is shown. Select it and click OK. Now HX3 should respond to the Console window at bottom and show startup info. All buttons will be anabled if everithing is OK.