Programmer is not responding

Everything back to the good old plain "Programmer not responding".
Tried reseating the AtMega five times without any success, board is not resting on any conductive surface (actually tried different ones - paper, PVC, plastics etc.)

Think i'll get in contact with PCB-Europe and hope for a replacement...

Thanks again for your Help! :wink:

Moe

fyi you should only have to reseat the Atmega chip once, if at all. The idea is to make sure all its pins are contacting, which generally only takes one try. 98% of the time this is not going to help, it's only for the rare cases where the chip and socket are not aligned.

I got my replacement arduino-ng today: It works like a charm!

With the working borad I programmed the serial_hello_world example from Arduino-serial: C code to talk to Arduino – todbot blog onto a atmega8 and put it in the defective board. I get no TX activity at all...
If I can provide any help with locating the error, just tell me!

My replacement Arduino just arrived via UPS - tested it and... it works - finally :wink:

Thanks again for providing help!
yours
Moe

Unfortunately, the lesson of this thread is: if your "Programmer is not responding", you may simply have bad hardware. I just spent several frustrating hours with three Arduino NG boards that I purchased from some desk at Ars Electronica; after I checked all of the obvious settings (correct microcontroller, correct baud rate, checked the bootloader, bla bla) and tried all of the reset button voodoo (one second before, two seconds after, bla bla), I was still getting this error and I thought I was going crazy. The only solution was to roll back to some very crusty Arduino boards (non-NG) that I had lying around. So watch out, and make sure you get a receipt with your purchases. Not only are there bad specimens, but it seems there might even be bad batches.

hey

Massimo will maybe pipe in here, but from experience with hundreds of students using the board, and what I have heard here in the forum, the rate of bad hardware is really miniscule...

What version of the board is it that you bought at Ars? If you have one of 'crusty' board working, you can swap the chip with the NG board and try that to verify if indeed there is a hardware problem.

D

:-[ Well, after I tried everything in the troubleshooting guide, I learned that it was "human error" after all. It seems that I simply had not tried the right combination of voodoo for downloading the program to the board. In my case, I did actually experience some behaviour that I had not seen described before:

I had to press the Reset Button AFTER I pressed "Upload to I/O Board". And when I say AFTER, I mean 4 to 5 seconds after. Seriously. Of course, this is the opposite advice from the feedback returned by the Arduino IDE....

It also turns out that (in my case anyway) there is a very narrow window of time where the Uploader will work. If I press the button too early, "Programmer is not Responding". If I press it too late, "Programmer is not responding". I have less than a second's time to get it right.

So, I hereby apologize to Massimo and the Crew for impugning the hardware -- typical newbie nonsense, I'm sorry. But I have to say, it would be great if there were a "Ready to receive program" indicator on the Arduino board, so that I wouldn't have to guess when to jump into the void.

Regards,
Golan

The problem's with the Arduino software, not the board... That is, there's already a ready to receive signal - an LED on pin 13 flashes three times when the bootloader starts, after which you have 5-6 seconds for the upload to begin. For simplicity, however, the Arduino environment recompiles your code every time you upload (I want to do something about this, but it's not been the highest priority), which on some machines seems to be very slow for reasons I don't really understand. Thus, by the time the upload begins, the bootloader has already timed out.

The suggestion of pressing the reset button after the hitting upload is mentioned on the troubleshooting page http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Troubleshooting, but it's certainly easy to miss. I'll take a look at improving the error message in the environment.

Thanks for the help! I'm glad I'm not crazy.

It might be a reasonable option in the IDE to turn off the compilation-before-upload.

Indeed, I did see that the troubleshooting guide mentioned the possibility of a reverse order (i.e. upload, then reset). What surprised me is that it was 4 to 5 seconds between one and the other, which seems like a long time. When I enrolled in a workshop last year on a different computer, the order was normal and the delay was only a second -- hence my surprise.

I'm on a reasonably new laptop (Dell, Intel Core Duo T7200 @2Ghz). So I don't know if CPU accounts for the extra delay in compiling. Anyway, I've gotten used to it now.

Thanks again,
Golan

Hello,

In fact I have had the same problem. But I have solved it pressing the reset button (in a NG board, also in a mini+usb boards) 4 seconds after the starting of the uploading process.

¿Is there any way to turn off the compilation-before-upload?

Thanks

Not yet. I'd like to make the software smart enough not to recompile a sketch if it hasn't changed, but it opens up a whole lot of complications. Another idea is to have the IDE keep pinging the bootloader while the compilation happens so that the bootloader doesn't time out. This is probably easier to do, though not as nice (since the uploads will still be pretty slow).

BTW, what operating system are you using?

Not yet. I'd like to make the software smart enough not to recompile a sketch if it hasn't changed, but it opens up a whole lot of complications. Another idea is to have the IDE keep pinging the bootloader while the compilation happens so that the bootloader doesn't time out. This is probably easier to do, though not as nice (since the uploads will still be pretty slow).

BTW, what operating system are you using?

I'm using Windows XP. In my case, I believe that the delay is produced for the anti-virus software or the firewall. Nevertheless, there is no problem when you know the cause, but, yesterday I was sure that I have two boards damaged.

Thanks for your quick response and best regards.

Dear all,

It seems that I have the same issue...

Binary sketch size: 1108 bytes (of a 14336 byte maximum)
tools/avr/bin/uisp -v=4 -dpart=atmega168 -dprog=stk500 -dserial=/dev/tty.usbserial-A50018lJ -dspeed=19200 --upload if=/Users/kotobuki/Desktop/arduino-0008/examples/Digital/Blink/applet/Blink.hex

Transmit: { 0 [30] [20] }
Programmer is not responding.

  1. press the reset button
  2. press the "Upload to I/O Board" button
  3. the Rx LED blinks once
  4. error message...

My environment is:

  • MacBook (Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, OS X 10.4.10)
  • Arduino NG rev.C (S/N 9311)
  • Arduino 0008 Alpha

I have no problem communicating with another USB device that also use FT232RL. I also tried different timing (e.g. press the upload button before pressing the reset button etc.) but got no luck. I'll be able to try with another Arduino NG around next Monday, but it would be much appreciated if you give me any suggestions about this issue.

PS
The Arduino Troubleshooting guide says:

Make sure there's a bootloader burned on the Atmega8 on your Arduino board. To check, connect an LED to pin 13 and reset the board. The LED should blink.

Yes, it blinks. But according to several posts in this forum, it should blink 3 times, but mine blinks forever at several Hz. Is this correct?

Hi Shiegeru! Nice to see you playing with the Arduino. I'm sorry it's not working more smoothly.

I'm assuming you don't have anything connected to digital pins 0 or 1 of the Arduino; if you do, try disconnecting them.

Are you running any other software that uses serial ports (e.g. daemons for other physical computing platforms or PDA sync applications)? Do you see the RX or TX lights on the board blink at all?

Blinking forever at several Hz should be fine. The board is probably just running a test program that was uploaded by Gianluca & co. Does it flicker briefly when you reset the board?

I hope we can get you up and running soon, so we can start working on more interesting things.

Hi Shiegeru! Nice to see you playing with the Arduino. I'm sorry it's not working more smoothly.

Hi Mellis,

It was nice to meet you. :wink:

First of all, I just tried with the another Arduino NG rev.C, and it works flawlessly. I also confirmed the board in question with another PC, but still I could reproduce the issue.

I'm assuming you don't have anything connected to digital pins 0 or 1 of the Arduino; if you do, try disconnecting them.

Yes, I don't have anything connected to digital pin 0 or 1 (and nothing is connected to the board).

Are you running any other software that uses serial ports (e.g. daemons for other physical computing platforms or PDA sync applications)?

No.

Do you see the RX or TX lights on the board blink at all?

When I hit the "Upload to I/O Board" button, the RX LED blinks only once. But nothing happens after that...

I hope we can get you up and running soon, so we can start working on more interesting things.

I really hope so. :slight_smile:

Best,
Shigeru

Sounds like there's something wrong with your board. It doesn't happen very often, but they do break sometimes. Do you see anything near the FTDI chip that looks like it's loose or disconnected? (There are a couple of pairs of pins soldered together on the chip - that's normal.)

Sounds like there's something wrong with your board. It doesn't happen very often, but they do break sometimes. Do you see anything near the FTDI chip that looks like it's loose or disconnected? (There are a couple of pairs of pins soldered together on the chip - that's normal.)

I can't find anything special, but let me confirm just to make sure:

  • pin 19 and 20 are soldered together
  • pin 25 and 26 are soldered together
  • pin 7, 18, 21, 25 and 26 are connected to GND
  • pin 4, 19 and 20 are connected to USBVCC
  • pin 1 is connected to M8CRXD via 1kohm resistor
  • pin 2 is connected to M8CTXD via 1kohm resistor
  • R2 and R3 are not mounted (this is same as the other Arduino NG board)

I also tried touching all pins with my soldering iron, but got no luck. I guess that the FT232RL is broken...

Best,
Shigeru

I also tried touching all pins with my soldering iron, but got no luck. I guess that the FT232RL is broken...

You can connect the RX and TX pins from the Mega8 / 168 to a DB9 connector and try it out with a PC that has a com port. That way you can be sure that the problem lies with the USB - serial chip.

/me

Forgot to mention that you would have to put in 10 resistors between the RX & TX connections and the DB9 connector.

/me

Shigeru: sounds like it (that the FTDI chip is dead). I'll see about getting you a replacement.