RPLIDAR A3M1-R1 DOA?

I received an A3M-R1 a week or two ago and am finally working on it. The SDK from the manufacturer downloaded without a problem (ROS) and catkin_make worked flawlessly. The RPLIDAR viewer came up with no problem, but it cannot detect the A3M1. I have checked the driver with ls-al /lib/modules/“$(uname -r)”/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/cp210x.ko and the driver for the serial chip seems to be there.

The device does not rotate, glow, or show any signs of life when plugged into the USB ports. Any tips?

What Baud rate do you have selected on the USB adapter?

I tried on both 256000 and 115200. The package comes up, pauses for a second or two, and then bombs out. The exact error is:

[ INFO] [1585770691.475347980]: RPLIDAR running on ROS package rplidar_ros. SDK Version:1.12.0

[ERROR] [1585770695.979328989]: Error, operation time out. RESULT_OPERATION_TIMEOUT!

[rplidarNode-2] process has died [pid 4280, exit code 255, cmd /home/intel18/catkin_ws/devel/lib/rplidar_ros/rplidarNode __name:=rplidarNode __log:=/root/.ros/log/2eaf7ae0-7452-11ea-8d7b-f4d1088d02b6/rplidarNode-2.log].

log file: /root/.ros/log/2eaf7ae0-7452-11ea-8d7b-f4d1088d02b6/rplidarNode-2*.log

OK. I rebooted everything, restarted every thing from scratch again, and now it’s working exactly as expected. I’m not sure what I did differently from the previous 3 times, but it’s up now. Please withdraw this inquiry.

Important note: Unlike some of the earlier RPLidar products, this doesn’t do anything when you plug it in. It looks dead. You need to get software working to get it to respond!

OK. I figured out the change that made the difference. The A3M1-R1 is very power hungry. I had it plugged into 2 USB ports on my NUC at first. To get it to work, I added a powered USB hub.