USBTinyISP Beginner Problems

USB AVR Programmer and SPI interface. Adafruit's USBtinyISP.

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endlesstee
 
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USBTinyISP Beginner Problems

Post by endlesstee »

I'm just getting started in electronics and this was my first kit. Naturally I'm infinitely excited to have it work right. After spending an afternoon soldering everything together and living through the building anticipation of plugging it in (even though I have nothing to program right now), I was supremely disappointed when I plugged it in an nothing happened. No green light, no OS recognition (Windows or OS X), nothing.

I've tried fixing several points that appeared to be dry joints, made sure all the diodes (led and zenier) were going the right direction, and that the AVR was plugged in correctly. None of this helped. To make things more confusing (to me) I tried to plug in the 6 pin header to an Arduino board and it powered up! So I've got power going through but it seems like nothing intelligent is going on inside the programmer.

Any ideas where I should begin looking more closely or what I may have done wrong?

Thank you.

adafruit
 
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Post by adafruit »

take a clear, crisp, well lit photo of the top and bottom of the kit
thanks!

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endlesstee
 
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Pictures

Post by endlesstee »

Here they are, please let me know if I need to re-take them.

http://www.endless-t.com/bottom.jpg
http://www.endless-t.com/top.jpg

*They're URLs because they are full size, I hope that's okay.

adafruit
 
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Post by adafruit »

oh i see whats up, you had one of the kits from a long time ago with the incorrect resistors, you received 15K instead of 1.5K.
email [email protected] with your address and ill ship you replacements.

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endlesstee
 
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Post by endlesstee »

Great! Thank you very much. It's a relief to know that it may not be a lack of proficiency on my behalf after all!

adrian650
 
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Changing component

Post by adrian650 »

Hi,

Hopefully the 1.5k resistors will sort you out.

Just a note, since you say it's your first kit. Unless you have a good solder sucker I'd recommend using your snips to cut the wires off the resistors to be removed from the PCB. They only cost pennies each but the board and your work is more valuable and can be spoilt by excess heat. When you then reheat the wires you can just pull the short fragment out without needing to think about the rest of the component. You could use a sucker to remove excess solder at that point. IMHO don't even think about braid. It's useless!

Adrian

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endlesstee
 
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Post by endlesstee »

Thanks for the hint and thank you to ladyada for sending those resistors. I still haven't had the time to get around to fixing the kit (here we are two months later...) but with the gift giving season around the corner, I've been dreaming up all sorts of things where a microcontroller could be a lot of fun.

Update:

I've now replaced the resistors and everything works perfectly. Although I missed the chance to make some real fun gifts this year, it's such a relief to see windows ask for the drivers and to see my Mac just do what it's supposed to do.

The next step will be to buy some more AVRs and test it all out.

Thanks to ladyada for having such great customer service--all the more reason to love independent businesses!

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