LED Belt Kit malfunction

[briandube]

We recently purchased your Digital Programmable Belt #322 and assembled it. It
functioned briefly - some of the Leds illuminated but now it does not function
at all. The green led on the board blinks slowly - the LEDs on the strip do
nothing. We have assembled electronic circuits before and we are reasonably
certain the entire circuit was assembled correctly. The batteries are good, we
also tried the circuit with a power supply.

Note: We did also connect the circuit via usb on a Mac (10.5. and on Windows
(7 and Vista). Is this required for testing the circuit?

Is there a way to troubleshoot the board and LEDs and see where the problem lies? Should we just return the assembled kit? Please advise.

[adafruit]

its probably easy to fix! did you manage to successfully upload the code to the 32u4 board?

[briandube]

We selected the Atmega32u4 breakout in the Board menu. There is nothing in the Serial Port menu that matches the board. Attached is an image of the serial port options.

[pburgess]

Hi Brian,

I think the first one in the list there (/dev/tty.usbmodemfa131) corresponds to the 32u4 board. It's pretty easy to check: disconnect the board, click the 'Serial Port' menu and see if it's gone. Re-connect the board and bring up the menu again, and there should be 2 corresponding items ('tty' and 'cu' -- you want the 'tty' one).

Unrelated: the Brian Dubé? Purveyor of the finest juggling equipment in the world? Forgive my having a fanboy moment here, but hot damn. Can't wait to see where you're going with this.

[briandube]

Is this 324u4 board REPROGRAMMABLE? Where would the file be uploaded to? Can multiple programs be stored at the same time on the board? Could they be accessed separately and how?
Brian

[pburgess]

Hi Brian,

The board is indeed reprogrammable, but can hold only one program at a time (stored in flash memory on the 32u4 chip itself). Since most programs use only a fraction of the chip's 32K storage, what you can do is have a single large program with a few different modes, selected with small switches or some type of sensor.

[briandube]

Thanks - everything is working fine now. Is there anyplace online where one can download programs to generate different LED light patterns using the Atmega32u4?

[pburgess]

In a ready-made state? Not that I'm aware of yet. Most users will start with the LEDbeltKit sketch and then adapt the code to their needs. If you're new to programming, there are some good starter tutorials on the Arduino web site.

[adafruit]

pburgess also wrotr advancebeltkit, which is a much more complex sketch, but shows some of the possibilities!