User Guide
! ! ! ! C O N T E N T S 1. Welcome to FlowPaw! 3 2. The FlowPaw Board 4 3. Claws and Click Boards 5 4. Install & Connect 6 5. FlowStone STEM 8 6. Firmware Upgrades 12 7.
1. ! ! ! ! ! Welcome to FlowPaw! Hopefully by now you’ll have opened the box and had a play with your new toy. It’s dead easy to get going but if you want to know some more detailed information about FlowPaw then this guide should have the answers you’re looking for.
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3. Claws and Click Boards ! FlowPaw has 4 claws into which you can plug expansion boards called Click Boards. To insert a click board, align the cut off in the lower-right corner of the board with the marking on your FlowPaw. ! Once you align all the pins correctly, push the board all the way into the socket.
4. Install & Connect Install FlowStone STEM Connect to PC If you haven’t done so already install your copy of our graphical programming software, FlowStone STEM. Once you have connected the click boards you want to use you are ready to connect to your PC. Insert the supplied FlowStone STEM DVD. A welcome screen will appear. Just click “Install FlowStone STEM” and follow the instructions. Connect the small end of the supplied retractable USB cable to the FlowPaw and the other to the PC.
! Run FlowStone ! Launch FlowStone STEM. If you want to explore some of the example files, choose Open from the File menu. You should already be in the correct folder but if not navigate to: My Documents\FlowStone\FlowPaw Examples Connect with FlowStone FlowStone has a special component for connecting to FlowPaw. You need to start this component before you can use any of the example files. Click the red ‘Start FlowPaw’ trigger button to do this.
5. FlowStone STEM FlowStone STEM is an education version of our graphical programming software FlowStone. There are full user guides for FlowStone available from the Download menu inside the software but here’s a quick overview to get you started.
The FlowPaw Component FlowStone has a special FlowPaw component which allows you to connect to a board and control it.
Click Boards To send or receive information to or from the physical click boards there are equivalent claw components. All you need to do is connect the claw components to the Claw outputs on the FlowPaw component. Just make sure that the component you connect to a claw output matches the click board plugged into the corresponding claw on the physical board.
Reporting Errors There are certain situations under which the board may stop communicating with FlowStone. If this happens the FlowPaw component will show a red warning message in the bottom-left corner. If you click the message a dialog box appears with more information about the problem. To rectify the situation, usually all you need to do is press the reset button on the board and then reconnect within FlowStone.
6. Firmware Upgrades 1 The capabilities of your FlowBoard can be expanded and improved by upgrading the firmware. This is not as scary as it sounds. It’s really easy - anyone can do it by simply following the steps below. 2 Download the latest firmware package from here: www.flowpaw.com/files/firmware.zip Unzip the files to a folder on your PC. There are three: the updater program mikroBootloader USB HID.exe, the firmware (a .
Board connected 5 If you successfully connect you’ll see this confirmed in the History Window Click to Choose the firmware .hex file Click the Browse for HEX button, navigate to the folder where you extracted the firmware files and select the firmware .hex file. 6 To complete the process, click the Begin Uploading button. Click to upload the firmware Uploading progress is shown here When the Success dialog shows the firmware has been updated. You can now use your FlowPaw again.
7. More Information For more information on FlowStone and the FlowPaw components see the FlowStone User Guide and FlowStone Component Reference. As mentioned earlier you can get at these from the Download menu inside FlowStone or you can follow this link: www.dsprobotics.com/manualsarea.php All our online information about FlowPaw can be found here: www.flowpaw.com/getstarted We have an active forum of FlowStone users here if you want to ask a question : www.dsprobotics.
