Flora v1.0a board not recognized

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hochspeyer
 
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Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

I've had this board for sometime, and today was the 1st time I pulled it out and tried to use it. I found an Adafruit article on how to add support for the board, but after a few attempts nothing worked. I have what I believe is the latest version of the Arduino IDE 1.8.15 and am working on a Win10 laptop, Intel core I7, 10th gen.

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adafruit_support_carter
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Wow, is it really a V1? That is some time ago. Is the PWR (power) LED at least coming on? Is your Windows machine responding at all when you plug in the board?

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hochspeyer
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

I'm up and running... sort of. I found the information I had missed in the "Getting Started with Flora" article in the Learn section of the site. I was able to download the missing driver(s), and Windows recognized the board when I plugged it in. The issue now is that the standard Blink sketch should continue blinking the yellow LED until the board is powered down. What happens instead is this: the green LED stays on, the red LED goes off, and the yellow LED flashes three times- then only the green one remains on. If I press the reset on the board,, this happens: the green LED remains lit, the red one flashes approximately 9 times, and the yellow one flashes once.

If I unplug and then plug the USB back in,the green goes solid, the yellow flashes twice, and the red does not come on at all.

When I recompile and upload, the green LED remains solid, the red flashes ~4-5 times, and the yellow flashes three times and then stops. The sketch follows- it's from the examples,,, and to the best of my knowledge it has not been modified-

Code: Select all

/*
  Blink

  Turns an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.

  Most Arduinos have an on-board LED you can control. On the UNO, MEGA and ZERO
  it is attached to digital pin 13, on MKR1000 on pin 6. LED_BUILTIN is set to
  the correct LED pin independent of which board is used.
  If you want to know what pin the on-board LED is connected to on your Arduino
  model, check the Technical Specs of your board at:
  https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products

  modified 8 May 2014
  by Scott Fitzgerald
  modified 2 Sep 2016
  by Arturo Guadalupi
  modified 8 Sep 2016
  by Colby Newman

  This example code is in the public domain.

  https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BuiltInExamples/Blink
*/

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.
  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
Last edited by adafruit_support_carter on Tue Jul 27, 2021 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: add [code] tags

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hochspeyer
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

I get the Windows sounds indicating a device is plugged in or removed.

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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Try this version of blink:

Code: Select all

void setup() {
  pinMode(7, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(7, HIGH);
  delay(1000);
  digitalWrite(7, LOW);
  delay(1000);
}

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hochspeyer
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

Well, that seems to have done the trick, although I'm not 100% certain as to "why"!

I took a look at the Flora while the sketch was uploading, and the yellow LED I THOUGHT was supposed to flash was actually two- TX and RX. The red one (D7) is now flashing at 1 sec intervals, so that's good. I'm going to try the compile and upload process a few more times, though, as it did not work the first time. The USB cable is also brand new, fresh out of the bag-everything came out of the Adafruit Flora GPS Starter Kit 1090... I originally purchased it for a project, but then the need went away. :(

*Update: it appears to be working normally now. I added two more lines to the code and changed the inter values on everything a few times so that I could verify changes to the code were occurring, so I'm guessing everything is good to go now.

Thank you!

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hochspeyer
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

However, last night when I plugged in the battery pack (also from the Flora kit, and also never before used!), the Flora would not power up. I had to go to work, so when I got home a few hours ago, I pulled out a DMM and tested each of the batteries; they were all good. I measured their output at the plug, and got ~5.4V. Then I tested the leads at the back of the socket and also got ~5.4V. When I plugged it back in to the computer's USB, it powered up right away, and began executing the Blink sketch. At this point I think the board itself may have an electrical problem.

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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Just to make sure of current state of things - The blink sketch is uploading and running OK via USB. But if you then try to power via battery, you get nothing?

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hochspeyer
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

Correct. I've tested everything with the DMM as far as I am able to. I'm getting power from the battery pack to the plug, and power at the back of the socket with no drop in voltage, measured from the leads on the back of the socket going to the PCB. And that's about where my skills with a DMM end! :)

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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Does the polarity appear correct also when you measure the voltage on the back of the socket?

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hochspeyer
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

Polarity is correct, to answer your question.

A friend of mine at work figured it out last night, and I'm sure you're going to feel as silly as I did when he told me he had figured out the problem- and it took him about 10 seconds.

The board was turned off.

There's a switch on the board, but there's a tiny surface mount device just below the RX LED (when looking at the board with the USB jack facing up), which is not present on the current v3 Flora. On my v1 board, all one can see in "NO" or "ON" (depending on how you look at it. The v3 board has room for "OFF" to be printed as well... it seems this switch only affects the battery power.

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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Ohhhhhh. Cool. Glad that was it. Geez, I was also over thinking it. Thanks for letting us know. Hope it continues to just work OK. Have fun!

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hochspeyer
 
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Re: Flora v1.0a board not recognized

Post by hochspeyer »

Thank you!

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