Troubleshooting Boarduino

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BartonOC
 
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Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:35 am

Troubleshooting Boarduino

Post by BartonOC »

I just got my kit for christmas and assembled it. Gave it power but no lights. No green or blinky. I went over all solder points to make sure they all had flowed nicely. I didn't realize it at first - but my kit came with 1.5K resistors instead of 1k. I swapped them out for some 1K ones - but still no go. I'm getting like .8 volts across the LED. I'm getting 5V at the regulator though.

Any ideas?

One of the caps got a little melted when i was cleaning up the resistor holes. I'm going to check that one when I get to work and have access to a scope. Would that cause the power LED to fail to light? It lights if I put 3V on it from a set of batteries.

Thanks

timv
 
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Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:13 pm

Post by timv »

Have you installed the processor chip yet? Despite a very prominent warning not to put the processor in its socket the wrong way, that's exactly what I did when I built my Boarduino. It survived and worked fine once turned around.

But I got a green light glowing even before the chip was in.

LEDs won't glow if you put them in backwards. But there would be no voltage drop across the dropper resistors either. It's odd that you're seeing .8V across the LED but no glow. What are the voltages at each side of the green LED compared to ground?

What about the jumper (the 3x2 one) for selecting power source? Do you have that set correctly for the source you're using? (9V adapter vs USB)

[Edit: No, the 3x2 jumper block is the programming interface. The power source selector has 1 row of 3 pins. My bad.]

You might even be able look at the schematic and trace which voltages are supposed to be on the pins there. That's a pretty good diagnostic.

Maybe something helpful there...?
Last edited by timv on Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

BartonOC
 
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Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:35 am

Post by BartonOC »

Thanks - forgot to put the jumper on. Works now :-)

Tracker at work shows the cap was still good - just a little melting on the shrinkwrap.

timv
 
Posts: 82
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:13 pm

Post by timv »

Oop! Easy mistake, and luckily not one that's gonna hurt anything.

Yes, I've been impressed at how tough these components are despite my clumsy soldering. (Hey, I'm a software guy.) But I was looking at a datasheet (for some film capacitors I think) not long ago that gave limits for time and temperature during manufacturing, and they're designed to take a lot.

Glad to hear that you got it working. Have fun with it.

BartonOC
 
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:35 am

Post by BartonOC »

Now I'm trying to get my parallel port programmer to work. Right now I'm just trying to get the avrdude to talk to it. It keeps saying that it doesn't see my arduino. If i hold the reset button down while this is happening - you see the red led pulsing - so I believe the computer is trying to communicate.

Any ideas?

timv
 
Posts: 82
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:13 pm

Post by timv »

Just to be clear... Are you holding the reset button down or just pressing it?

You should just press it briefly to reset the processor. After the reset (after you release the button) the bootloader code will wait briefly--seven seconds, I think--for a programmer to start talking to it and to accept code.

adafruit
 
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Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Post by adafruit »

BartonOC wrote:Now I'm trying to get my parallel port programmer to work. Right now I'm just trying to get the avrdude to talk to it. It keeps saying that it doesn't see my arduino. If i hold the reset button down while this is happening - you see the red led pulsing - so I believe the computer is trying to communicate.

Any ideas?
99% of the time, its a wiring problem...id use a scope to verify the pins from the programmer are correctly set up

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