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Interfacing the Arduino Control Box
The newer Arduino-based controller board for the manipulators uses a USB connector instead of the RS-232 serial connector of the Lynxmotion SSC-32 controller board. It also has a nice little box made for it, hence the name Control Box.
Serial Port. Usually the serial port is given a consistent name across the operating systems, so that one need only program the serial port once and it works from there. When using a USB cable, the interface appears as a new serial port once the drivers are loaded. The problem is that the serial port label is not necessarily consistent from machine to machine. That means it is necessary to confirm what COM port gets defined for the computer that you connect it to. You might be able to expect that this name will be consistent from day to day, as you plug and unplug over time, given that the computer and the control box used stay the same.
Windows
To determine the COM port label in Windows, open the “Devices and Printers” dialog box. If the control box is plugged in and the drivers for it are installed, it should pop up as some kind of Arduino device. Click on it to open up another dilog box. Click on the Hardware tab and you will be a listing of properties. The port name is on of those properties. It may be COM3 or COM7 or some other number.