Arduino BT com port issue

Hi,
I have recently purchased an Arduino BT. I haven't been able to upload firmware to the Arduino yet. I am using bluesoleil for creating bluetooth virtual serial ports. I read a post on this forum that says that arduino IDE software has problems using higher com port numbers:

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=print;num=1140842042

Every time I attempt to upload firmware I get the following message:

Error: No such file or directory
-> /dev/com18

Bluesoleil determines which com ports are used with bluetooth. It appears that the serial port assignment can't be modified.

Is there alternative software for serial firmware upload? Is there any documentation that describes the firmware upload protocol?

Thanks and regards,
Chris Spooner.

hi

yes, for some reason, if you are using windows with the ArduinoBT you won't get it working if the com port is above something like 6 or 8. I taught a class with the BT last term and lots of Windows users had this problem. Can't remember what the workaround was.

Windows tends to make virtual com ports and keep them in the list, so you will have to get rid of them! Not sure how, there is probably info floating around somewhere on how to do it. There was apost on asimilar issue a while back that suggested trying this hack to remove the unused virtual com ports.

D

Hi,
I performed the suggested Win XP hack to view hidden devices in device manager. This didn't help much though.

I uninstalled the BlueSoleil bluetooth software. Then I re-installed it. Amazingly, it now used a different set of com ports. Since it now has virtual serial ports on com4 and com5, I don't get the message saying that the com port cannot be found. Problem solved.

Now all I have to do is work out why I only get "Programmer is not responding." messages when I try to upload firmware.

Regards,
Chris Spooner.

In the device manager it is possible to change the com port assignment of virtual com port devices like USB and bluetooth. I believe it is under the port settings tab. I don't have any virtual com ports on this machine so I can't check until tonight.

Yes, I know that you can change the com port identifier in Device Manager. However, what I found with Blue Soleil is that it does not update to the new com port. It continues trying to use the old one, meaning that a serial connection cannot be made at all. It appears that the only way to change the com ports is to reinstall Blue Soleil.

Regards,
Chris Spooner.