FAQ

Note

This section is being extended as we get feedback from customers. If your specific questions is not yet listed please either take a look into the full documentation on these pages or get in touch with us directly. We will do our best to help you!

General Questions

How do the USBoard-USS5 and ultrasonic sensors work?

Both the basic principle of ultrasonic sensors and the cross-echo operating mode of the USBoard-USS5 are described in detail at Operating Principle.

The sensor readings are not what I expected.

Unfortunately this is a common problem of ultrasonic sensors and caused by the physical measuring principle. Different from laser light ultrasound waves are easily disturbed and bounced around which leads to faulty readings in some situations. They also react differently to different materials and surfaces. This is the reason why the USBoard-USS5 is not a safety device.

Please take a look into our FOV tests. We also strongly recommend to do some tests and experiments with the system before going into production.

How to get measurement data as fast as possible?

Disabling all sensor channels that are currently not in use will prevent the USBoard-USS5 from trying to send pulses on these channels and from waiting for an echo. This will reduce the cycle time needed for updating measurements from all sensors that are actually used. Please take a look at the parameter set description at Parameter Set and command CMD_SET_CHANNEL_ACTIVE at Commands.

In some applications it might also be an option to use the Cross Echo Mode.

Connection Problems

The CAN bus reports errors

Please make sure that there is at least one CAN terminating resistor on the bus. The recommended configuration is one 120 Ohm resistor between CAN High and CAN Low at each physical end of the bus line.

The USBoard-USS5 features a micro switch to enable the integrated terminating resistor. Please use the GUI to activate the resistor of the USBoard-USS5-IP.

The GUI does not connect to the USBoard-USS5

In case of a direct USB connection please check the following:

• Did you select the correct port? Some computers still have internal COM ports that can be mixed up with the virtual port of the USBoard-USS5’s USB connection. Try with all available ports.
• Has the port number changed? Different USBoard-USS5 may have different port numbers assigned by the operating system. Please close and restart the GUI to make it update the port list.