Hey guys,

I just got my Diecimila board today and I was all excited to finally get started with Arduino after a very long time of thinking about it.

I plugged it in, installed the drivers that came with the online distribution and BOOM! Blue screen of death (BSOD).

I've tried every combination I can think of.

Power from a wall-wart. plug it in after the software starts up. Nothing works because as soon as I click "tools" in the software environment, I get a system crash.

Anyone know what I should do? I tried searching and couldn't find anything, am I the only one?!?

It seems to be driver related. Windows XP SP2

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So i browsed the forum for a little bit and found this driver from worapoht.

http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/sw/USBDriverInstallerV2.0.0.exe

and it seems to have worked. My LED is blinking

Hello everyone, I found a problem with the Arduino. When I use a matrix keypad (3x4) and press the buttons stupid fast for a while variables don't get set (such as time) and my program goes nuts. I've found a way to detect if this were to happen (although rare) but I need a way to reset the Arduino.

I've read about the watchdog timer and it seems to be perfect but I can't figure out how to implement it. I don't have a problem burning a new bootloader either.

Anyone know how to do it? Or a similar technique? I don't really want to have a pin pull the reset button either (as this is wrong).

Thanks  

EDIT:

lol omg, I'm retarded. I figured out the problem, I was using INTs instead of UNSIGNED LONGs to hold time variables  :

hahha, of course it was crashing. Agh, gota stop programming at 3 am. It would still be nice to know about the watchdog tho  8-)

You'll want to use the LiquidCrystal library. A nice tutorial has been setup here:

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LiquidCrystal

I should note that the library has been updated but it is not included int the 0016 package, you'll have to manually update the library yourself (drag and drop files, it's easy).

I would not recommend using the old LiquidCrystal library as it has timing issues that were never addressed until recently. I've used both and the new library is a little slower but about 100 times more reliable. The old library has been known (and i've personal had it happen)  to throw garbled text on the screen or not putting text on at all.

It's a good tutorial with good examples, give it a look over.

I'm trying to put bootloaders on some new ATMEGA168-20PU chips I got. I've burnt bootloaders before on other new mega168's with the current equipment I'm using but i'm not getting any luck.

Here's my setup:
Arduino Diecimila
home-made parallel programmer (from bootloader DIY)
12v regulated power input

Windows XP SP3
My parallel port is configured for ECP.
I'm running 'GIVEIO' and i've even re-installed it.
My registry is modified (DisableWarmPoll)
parallel port configured for no interrupts and it sticks
Arduino version 0016
Environment configured for Diecimila w/ 168

my error is something like this:

Code:

avrdude: AVR device not responding
avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions
avrdude: Device signature = 0xffffff
avrdude: Yikes!  Invalid device signature.
avrdude: Expected signature for ATMEGA168 is 1E 94 06
avrdude: verifying ...
avrdude: verification error, first mismatch at byte 0x0000
         0x00 != 0x07
avrdude: verification error; content mismatch

avrdude done.  Thank you.

Also, pin 13's LED turns on once the parallel programmer is inserted. I don't know if this means anything but I thought it was interesting.

I'm stumped. I've also tried it on another machine that's running Vista and still no luck. I've checked the programmer and resistors out, everything checks out.

thanks in advance.

Thanks. That makes sense.

The HD44780 chip has two character tables in it's datasheet. http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/LCD/HD44780.pdf pg 17 & 18.

One is labeled as ROM Code: A00 and the other as ROM Code: A02. Is there a way to access A02? It has much more symbols and frankly, I have no need for Chinese or Japanese (sorry, can't tell the difference with LCD font).

With the LiquidCrystal library, it gets all characters from A00. I read the datasheet and can't find any information on how to "unlock" the A02 ROM.

Any insight? I'm very new with LCDs.

TIA

Wow, thanks. I guess shift registers are the way to do it.

I guess my project would be similar to home automation, but that's not what it's for. The Arduino gets user input on what devices to turn on and these devices are turn on by their respective relays. I don't want devices switching on when they're not supposed to be on. So I don't know if a shift register would work properly.

I know i'll need to use transistors, the relays are going to be 5v coils and they'll be switching 12v lines.

The RC-4 is exactly what i'm looking for but I can make my own with an extra Arduino chip for less than that.


I think i'll poke around some home automation projects and see how they did it.

Can you write directly to a shift register?

Such as

0100

and

1110

instead of just shifting?

I'm building a circuit and i don't have enough pins for the amount of relays I need to use. Right now, i really only need 4 relays but it may expand to many many more (prob no more than 8 or 16).

I can spare 2 pins for serial. I know exactly how I could design another arduino to do this job but i was wondering if there was already a pre-made circuit to do this.

bwahh, this may be too far confusing for a pre-made chip to do this. Maybe I'll just make it myself, but just wondering if anything exists.

Thanks again.  

Awesome, thanks for the point in the right direction.

I'm not exactly sure if I'm even thinking of this right. Here's my dilemma:

My father got some new machines from Italy with no documentation. We're currently trying to get some info from the manufacturer as to exactly how to interface the machines but the language barrier is a little hard. I'm not looking for a translator.

The machines have ethernet connections  and are supposed to talk to each other. Basically they receive  a when to start command, and send a completion command. More info may be sent but I'm not really interested in it.

The quicker I can get these machines up and running the better. They work on some type of private network but I really have no information at all about the specifics.

I can manually start the machines and have them run their cycles so I'm looking for a way to probe the ethernet connections to see what kind of data they're sending.

Is this possible? Hooking them together works because they're sending data, but I have no idea what, and it would be nice to setup some personalized software to control these new guys.


I also forgot to add, I have a controller that I can type in the machine number and tell it to start, and it will. The data is sent over ethernet. I fear that this is some type of custom setup made by the previous owners so there may be zero documentation. So i'm just looking to replicate what this controller sends and receives, it doesn't even have to make sense, although it would be nice.


Thanks for the help and a bump in any direction is better than where I am now.

I decided to write my own code and not use the keypad library. It works now, seemed to be a problem with the code or maybe the way I was interpreting it.

I'm at a point where I feel my mega128 may actually be blown. I know I've done some things to it and said "whoops" afterwords (all part of learning I guess) but it's been ok up until now.

Here's the question. Do I need to add resistors to my keypad input pins to protect the Arduino from performing a 'short to ground'? or is a short to ground ok as long as its going from one pin to another, (IE it won't short out because the chip is "smart"? lol IDK)


I'm using the keypad library and let's say I have col0 as pin 2, and row0 as 3, if I shove a jumper wire from 2 - 3 I don't get a response from the board. What's up?

Agh, going crazy, thanks so much.

thanks for the super fast responses  

I've heard of PICAXE but never really investigated it. I guess now I have a reason.

Good to know about the lillypad burn, that way I won't have to fool with much.

thanks again.