Another update,
I went to the site from the playground, that tells you about live communication between board and flash and there is a nice step by step guide, and it works fine. btw for anyone who might need it, the site is: http://www.progetto25zero1.com/b/tools/Arduino/
Now I am going to try and get it to turn on and off leds. I cant find any information about it but perhaps I can figure out a way!

Everything is working great!!!!!!!!!! ;D  

What I was originally wanting to do with arduino, was to control my robot from the computer using leds. From the computer, I would press the command I want it to do and then it lights up leds and then the leds are right next to light dependent resistors and once the certain leds light up it will do the desired action. (I have absolutly no experience in this sort of stuff, so that was pretty much the only way I could think of that would actually work! 8-))

Anyways, I am wondering, how would it be possible to control arduino, directly from the computer in real time? I saw on the arduino playground site, a project that lets you control arduino from flash, I am going to most likely be controlling it from there.

If anyone knows alot about this subject, maybe we can start a new topic and post it on the fourm, as there is not so much info here on fourm about it on the fourm.

I'm going to go read more and learn more about controlling it directly via computer, and see what I can learn and find!
Thanks

I got it to upload.  ;D I think when I was doing it the other times, I waited for the light to turn back on or I did it immeditly after before I pressed upload, and this time today I did it after the link light was off for 1-2 seconds.

I still however cant get the led to link up.
Once you upload the blinking led project, is it suppost to start blinking while connected to the computer, or will it work only when off the usb cable and powered by an external power supply??

Thanks!

Heres a screenshot

Last week I purchased an arduino board from sparkfun and I have not been able to get it to work as every time I try to upload something to it, I always get a programming error and the led never lights up even after reseting. I know I connected led correct, ( long lead of the LED in pin13 and the shorter lead in the hole labeled GND) and it is a standard led that works fine, 3.3v(or something like that)

I tried on two comupters (both windows XP) and no matter what I always get the same error, "programmer not responding; reset the board before exporting." I have tried reseting the board and that does nothing as well. I have also looked at similar problems that people had on this fourm, but that did not help either.
When I connect to the computer, green light always lights up, and the link light (orange) keeps blinking, the 2 rx and tx lights never light up except in the beginning when you connect the board.

I have the newest arduino program (arduino-0006) and installed all the nessasary drivers, (FTDI USB Drivers and keyspan) and when I connect to computer, program recognizes board.

I think that perhaps it is defective, as I just bought this brand new from Spark Fun and everything should be working fine.....

I would greatly appreciate someone help me with this!!!
Thanks!
I can not wait to start using arduino, as I think, when working, this is an awesome device despite the problems I am having now!  8-)

Here are some pictures:

did anyone figure out a code that will work with arduino yet???

Hi,
I am new at this whole thing and I appologize for asking this silly question but how exactly do you connect the led to port 13 so you can use that to see if everything is working all right. Do you just stick in there on lead of the led and the other to a power supply??? Also, I am wondering if they are easier ways to stick cords and stuff like that  into arduino by means of something like aligator clips or something easy like that.

Thank you very much!
Hopefully one day, I will actually figure out what I am doing!!!!!  

I was just looking on sparkfun for a 9v power supply but unfortunitly they are sold out so I just purchased from a 6v power supply and I am wondering if I connect it to Arduino, will everything work alright?? All I am trying to do is to pretty much control leds from the computer and the leds are only 3.3v, so I think everything will be alright.

Thank you very much for any replies!!!!!!
David