FTDI Friend and Standalone not in sync

[Thiasma]

Hi everybody,

In order to finish a project mixing Arduino and Processing I recently bought the adafruit FTDI Friend + extra to connect my computer to the standalone arduino i built (with an atmega328).
The atmega already had a bootloader on it and I uploaded the sketch without any problem from my PC on the standalone using my original Arduino Uno board by connecting together the reset, Tx, Rx, Vcc and GND pin of the Uno board and standalone.

I installedthe driver for the ftdi friend chip and I created a new COM port for it. When I plug the FTDI on the standalone the same way (reset pin -> RTS, Tx -> Tx, ect...) and try to upload the same sketch I got the following result.

"avrdude: Version 5.11, compiled on Sep 2 2011 at 19:38:36
Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch

System wide configuration file is "C:\Program Files\Arduino\hardware/tools/avr/etc/avrdude.conf"

Using Port : \\.\COM5
Using Programmer : arduino
Overriding Baud Rate : 115200
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Recv:
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00

avrdude done. Thank you."

Does any one already had this problem ? The atmega of the standalone is correctly plugged because it works with the Uno board.

Thanks for any help you can provide
T.

[adafruit_support_bill]

What bootloader is on the Atmega? Do you have the right board-type selected for the bootloader?

[Thiasma]

The bootloader on the atmega is "Arduino Uno" so I set "Tools -> Type of board -> Arduino Uno" on the IDE and it worked when I used my Uno board for uploading the sketch but not with the FTDI friend.

[adafruit_support_bill]

What port does the FTDI-Friend show up on? Make sure you have that selected in Tools->Serial Port

[Thiasma]

The FTDI-Friend shows up on the port COM5 whereas my arduino Uno board is on the port COM3

I found something which might be interesting, when I plug my circuit with the FTDI-Friend and open the Serial Monitor I get this message repeting several times on the IDE when I unplug the FTDI-Friend from the computer.

Erreur dans Serial.serialEvent()
java.io.IOException: Bad file descriptor in nativeavailable
at gnu.io.RXTXPort.nativeavailable(Native Method)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort$SerialInputStream.available(RXTXPort.java:1532)
at processing.app.Serial.serialEvent(Serial.java:258)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort.sendEvent(RXTXPort.java:732)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort.eventLoop(Native Method)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort$MonitorThread.run(RXTXPort.java:1575)

Do you know what it means ?

[adafruit_support_bill]

Do you know what it means ?

If you have the Serial Monitor open and you unplug the USB device that it is talking to, the COM port disappears. The Arduino IDE is a Java application and the Java runtime does not handle the resulting IO error very well.

[Thiasma]

Hmm... so it's just my computer yelling at me for disconnecting the usb too violently

Anyway, the FTDI friend chip seems to not allow the communication between my standalone and the computer, the port is correct, the board-type selected for the bootloader is correct.
Do you think I could try to re-install the driver ?
If yes, how do I do ?

[adafruit_support_bill]

I don't think it is a driver problem. Your computer seems to be recognizing the FTDI Friend and communicating with it. The problem is likely in the TTL serial communication between the FTDI Friend and your Atmega chip.

Connect a jumper between the Rx and Tx pins on your FTDI Friend (a "loopback" connection). Open a Serial Monitor window (make sure it is set to the same baud rate as your COM port) and type. Do you see the characters echoed back?

[Thiasma]

Hi,
Sorry for the answering time.
I made the loopback connection, opened the serial monitor window, typed random sentences and, as I pressed enter and got the led flashing, I obtained the same sentences back in the window.
I am surprised though because the sentence came back unchanged at every baudrate (9600, 38400...) whereas my COM port baudrate is defined at 9600.

[adafruit_support_bill]

I obtained the same sentences back in the window.
I am surprised though because the sentence came back unchanged at every baudrate (9600, 38400...)

With a loopback, the transmit & receive rates are always guaranteed to be the same.