Programmer is not responding on Serial Arduino

Hi,

I had exactly the same problem as Fredrik Petersson. On two computers, XP and Mac OS X G4 with all drivers and stuff installed. On other computers it worked fine with the same installations. It seems that there is some problem when you use computers that have other software using Javas Serial communication installed wich is the only thing the both computers I did not work with had in common. Arduino did not work on the computers with different versions of Handy Cricket Software.

You're probably right about the conflict with the Java serial library. We're using an open-source serial library (RXTX) as a replacement for Sun's Java serial library (which doesn't work on the Mac). It's possible that Arduino picks up another Java serial library which conflicts with the one it comes with. What error message do you get? Do you see a comm.jar or jcl.jar or serial something in /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/lib/ext on the Mac (or in the respective folder on your PC)?

I only get the Programmer not Responding Error Message after seeing a brief flash on the TX LED . Even removing comm.jar, win32com.dll and deinstalling CricketLogo did not change the situation. I tried to figure what the CricketLogo installer does but there is no Source availible.

I just bought a USB Arduino board from Sparkfun in the US, and I'm having the same "programmer not responding" error. I've tried it on two different windows xp machines, on different USB ports (usually defaults to 5). I've tried changing the port and the baud rate in the IDE, I always press the reset button, I downloaded the latest USB driver. An LED connected between pin 13 and ground blinks rapidly (twice a second or so), which is faster than others reported - I assume this means the boot software on the Atmega chip is properly loaded, yes? What now?
Thanks,
Paul

Is there anything connected to pins 0 or 1?

Have you ever managed to upload a program to the board?

Nothing connected to pins 0 or 1, never been able to upload from either of my computers.

It's strange that you can see the individual blinks; it actually sounds slower than it should be. How many times does it blink?

It's possible that either you have an old version of the bootloader or your chip is configured to run slower than it should be. You could try changing the serial.download_rate in your preferences.txt file (in Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Arduino - edit when Arduino is not running) to 9600, 4800, 2400, or 1200.

Also check if you have any overly aggressive anti-virus software or firewalls running. Or PDA sync applications, other microcontroller downloaders, etc. They sometimes conflict and block access to the USB-serial ports.

Just in case I'm not the only one to be caught out by it, I'll draw attention to a far simpler cause of this "programmer is not responding" error:

When the GUI says "RESET the board right before exporting", it means press reset and then export immediately. Do NOT wait on the board appearing to "come back to life" - by then the upload opportunity will have passed.

To clarify the upload procedure:

You should press the reset switch on your board and IMMEDIATELY run the upload. If you leave it more than a few seconds after pressing reset, the existing program will start up again or, if there is no program on the board, the bootloader will resume blinking the LED. (~3Hz on my new board)). At this point, the board will have ceased listening for your upload, and the upload task will eventually terminate with "programmer is not responding".

It caught me out until I read the bootloader behaviour documented here:

Thank you for your suggestions, Neill and Mellis. Unfortunately, none of those ideas has worked. I'd hoped to buy a bunch of the boards for use with my high school physics class, but that's not going to happen I'm afraid.
Paul

Just in case I'm not the only one to be caught out by it, I'll draw attention to a far simpler cause of this "programmer is not responding" error:

When the GUI says "RESET the board right before exporting", it means press reset and then export immediately. Do NOT wait on the board appearing to "come back to life" - by then the upload opportunity will have passed.
...

Dear God, thank you. I've been hunting all over the web trying to solve this and it really is the fault of the documentation that I've read, I guess. Nothing that I read made it clear that I was to upload before the bootloader was booted again. Hopefully some of the (many) others out there with this error can solve it by just changing their sequence of steps. Thanks a lot.

rahji

i just solved a similar problem - "Device is not responding" - on WinXP / arduino_0006 by doing this:

  • unplug the arduino
  • uninstall the COM port drivers
  • replug it

I tried a few things before which didn't help:

  • power cycling the arduino
  • changing com port numbers (at one point my toshiba bluetooth stack collided with the arduino so that there were two devices listed as "COM11" in device manager)
  • disabling other com ports

We've had similar problems with 3 out of 12 arduino NGs (on arbitrary student-owned laptops) in a little workshop last week. We'll see if this fixes those, too.

Perhaps a better explanation in the docs would be to say "Press reset and Upload buttons simultaneously".

How about a 10 second video -- the most basic ever -- on just compiling, resetting, and uploading, complete with expected led patterns? One problem is that what works for us doesn't necessarily work for everyone else's boards. Those who've taught classes are in a better position than I am to say what's the best cover-all approach to present.

THE todbot? Thanks for the great learning material.

Hi all,

I had the exact same problem as described by okhan, trying to get 16 self-mounted serial boards running. 9 of them made our beloved error message "programmer not responding" show up. Unfortunately, none of the solutions provided by this forum worked for me.

For anybody out there being close to trambling his board to pieces - like I was - here's what I experienced:
Sometimes, the IC just wasn't pressed into the socket properly. If uploading sketches still didn't work after fixing that, I re-burned the bootloader and tried uploading my sketch once again. Sometimes, I had to do these steps twice. Sounds like a voodoo solution again, but by following this procedure I finally got all of my boards running! Give it a try.

If anybody knows a more reasonable solution, please let me know!

Cheers
Flurp

I've got a quickly blinking L LED (the one next to pin 13)... And I get a Programmer is not responding. Error.

I'm on OS 10.4 and have all the drivers installed, and the IDE is up and running (it had issues installing though).

I also have 2 different boards with the exact same behavior, both connecting with different Serial Numbers.

in the Tools menu board A I get: /dev/tty.usbserial-A1015S9 and /dev/cu.usbserial-A1015S9
and board B gives me: /dev/tty.usbserial-A4000PCB and /dev/cu.usbserial-A4000PCB

I also have 2 different boards with the exact same behavior, both connecting with different Serial Numbers.

in the Tools menu board A I get: /dev/tty.usbserial-A1015S9 and /dev/cu.usbserial-A1015S9
and board B gives me: /dev/tty.usbserial-A4000PCB and /dev/cu.usbserial-A4000PCB

What happens with just board?

Well with either board (I've been connecting them one at a time) they powerup, blink once to confirm the boot loader, and then after 10 seconds they begin blinking @ 3Hz.

I think they came tested as I purchased them from Sparkfun.com, the US distro, and have the led_blink program installed.

I've attempted different reset / upload combinations all with no luck.

EDIT: I was just able to upload the knight_rider_3 program, and had blinking TX/RX leds the whole way...
I had a couple of problems:

  1. serial connection was off in the network control panel in system prefs (not sure that mattered)
  2. i had tried changing the serial.download_rate to 9600 (after just now changing it back to 19200 it worked)
    3. i think i was trying to upload a program that was already there... ( or it was just the port being off thing)

Would still like some idea of which of the above things mattered if anyone knows.

EDIT 2: when trying this on the second board it worked with the led_blink program first
EDIT 3: i removed the usbserial connections from the network panel in OS X and it still worked, perhaps re-runing the macosx_setup.command file is what did it... I was trying too many things to keep track!

just received my arduino/usb 168 today.. and had the dreaded error " programmer not responding " was caused my pc assigning a com17, i went into control panel/ system / devices / preferences / advanced forced com2..
rebooted..
started development environment arduino 0007, options com2 and atmega186 (not mega8)

short depress of reset switch, quick 3 blinks, and then clicked download bingo the tx rx lights were flashing and i'm up and working

Binary sketch size: 3676 bytes (of a 7168 byte maximum)

C:\MicroContoller\arduino-0007\tools/avr/bin/uisp -v=4 -dpart=atmega168 -dprog=stk500 -dserial=/dev/com2 -dspeed=19200 --upload if=C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\My Documents\Arduino\led_blink\applet\led_blink.hex

Binary sketch size: 3676 bytes (of a 7168 byte maximum)

[ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] . [ff] [20] }
Receive: { . [14] . [10] }
Transmit: { Q [51] [20] }
Receive: { . [14] . [10] }

(total 4116 bytes transferred in 3.80 s (1083 bytes/s)
Firmware Version: 1.15
Firmware Version: 1.15

are you sure you selected the atmega168 from the menu?

this
Binary sketch size: 3676 bytes (of a 7168 byte maximum)
means the code was compiled for the atmega8