This problem for people about "Not in sync" error. Any updates?

I teach with Arduino and I see a couple hundred boards in a year. I had purchased a batch from a local supplier that were darker blue then the regular Arduino boards and that have a red power LED. Since this purchase i have had some students by the same boards off of Amazon. The boards all say made in Italy but are not official arduino boards, they resemble a lot of the made in china knock off stuff . Any way every single one of them has giving me the "Not in sync" error at some point in their lives. I can change the 328 but eventually, "Not in sync" re appears. Most these boards have hit the trash in my class room because they got to frustrating to trouble shoot with students.

Check the board for a red LED, it could be a knock off board sold to you as the real thing.

binning the boards seems rash ,better to salvage the parts and build a breadboard version to test the parts .i have bought chinese copies off ebay and theyre exactly the same as the originals .

I have a Chinese knock off, it works as well as an Italian one. If swapping chips around points to the chip, burning a new bootloader on it tends to sort things. Its not too difficult is you've got another working Arduino. Reading the 'ArduinoISP' sketch in the examples in the IDE yields clues or http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP .

It could have been the batch that i had. For me it makes a lot more sense to help students with their projects on stable platforms then running around troubleshooting and and burning boot loaders. When you are teaching you to minimize any thing that will frustrate students. Plus i would rather pay for the Arduino brand boards, they developed the boards and supporting them means more advances and cooler things.

Ok, the long winded story of "what happened":

I bought a board. It worked.
Either computer.

Alas it was an Ether TEN board and the shield didn't fit over the RJ45 connector, so I bought another "UNO" equivalent.
It too worked. Either computer.

The UNO is used in my alarm clock - the main reason I got into Arduino. It works.
Nowadays it is only programmed from my laptop.
It still can be.

The Ether TEN board was being used in my potted plant watering system and I accidently fried it. Power on non-power pins.

It sort of works, but does silly things now and then. Too unreliable.

I bought another "UNO compatible".

This one won't flash sketches on either computer.
I took it to a mate's place who is into Arduino and it won't flash there - same error. To me: Pointing to the board.

Suspecting the board, I went back to the shop - with laptop - and tried another board.
The boards at the shop have different connectors on them, so a new cable had to be used - supplied with the board.
SAME PROBLEM.

So: So far I know:
The laptop can flash my alarm clock. (No, I can't start swapping chips. I need the alarm clock.) But the cable works, the laptop works, and the board work.

New board: It has this NOT IN SYNC error.
Went to shop, new board, new cable.
NOT IN SYNC.
Tried another board - this time an Ether TEN.
NOT IN SYNC.

Hmmmm......

Went to another shop and bought a genuine UNO.
This has yet another connector type.

Got home.

NOT IN SYNC.

Tried on other computer.

NOT IN SYNC.

This is:

NEW BOARD, NEW CABLE, DIFFERENT COMPUTER.

I get my old Ether TEN board - which had my old plant watering sketch.
Flashed the BLINK sketch.

LED 13 blinks.

Flash it with my sketch. LED 13 stops blinking.
Flash it with BLINK and it starts blinking again.

PROVEN: The machine can talk to the boards ok.

When I try to flash BLINK to the new board, the RX/TX LEDs do blink a bit, but not as much as with the Ether TEN board, and I get a NOT IN SYNC error.

Try the BLINK sketch on the Genuine UNO board: SAME.

Tried changing the BOARD TYPE in the IDE. SAME.

Have checked Device manager and I am selecting the correct COM port. The board is listed and is known.

Other things to mention:
I have both 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 installed.
NEITHER ONE can upload to the two new boards.

Indulge me:
What speed do the com ports have to be set at?

I did notice I can select the board type/name and the com port, but not the settings like speed, parity, stop bit, etc.

Though I guess if I can flash the BLINK to my faulty Ether TEN, the settings should be ok.

lost_and_confused:
Alas it was an Ether TEN board and the shield didn't fit over the RJ45 connector, so I bought another "UNO" equivalent.

So you bought non-Arduino supported hardware?

This might help narrow down your problems.

James,

Well, yes and no.

The original board/s I bought (two of them) were Freetronics boards.
They both worked.
One was their UNO equivalent and one was their Ether TEN.
The third board was also an UNO equivalent but was a different board. It has prototype area on it.
It doesn't work.
All the other boards in the shop (from Freetronics) didn't work. They also have different connectors on them. So that eliminates the cable.

I then tried the board on someone else's computer and it didn't work.

Now I have bought a Genuine UNO and it too doesn't work.

It is strange that at about that time other people started getting the same error.

To me that seems like a bigger bug than it being the board I bought, or my PC/s.

I'll go out on a limb:

I see there is a 1.0.3 IDE available.

I also read that it needs
.Net Framework 4.0

I just tried with 1.0.1 - which used to work and it now doesn't.

But if I am to move up to / on to the new GUI/IDE, I will need that installed.

I have only just got access to the "interweb" and don't now if I have that installed.

I have XP SP3 and I am getting "updates available" but they are UPDATES, not installs.

How/where do I get this .Net Framework 4.0?

I shall ask Mr Google as well, but this may be a factor for not only me but others - which is why I am declaring it here.

I also read that it needs
.Net Framework 4.0

Where in the world did you read that? Citation link needed, otherwise it didn't happen. :smiley:

Lefty

Sorry: link as per here:

http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,118440.0.html

lost_and_confused:
Sorry: link as per here:

http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,118440.0.html

That doesn't help me, 21 pages of postings? That the official Arduino IDE platform would ever rely on a non-open source windows .NET framework would just never happen in my opinion and would also require a rather major forking for the Linux and Apple versions of the IDE, no? I suspect you have misunderstood something or are confusing it with some arduino 'compatible' IDE, not an 'official' IDE release.

So 'splain yourself Lucy.

Lefty

Page 1, top lines.

I am not that understanding of what is going on.

I have 1.0.1 and recently installed 1.0.2

I don't know if that is at the same time the problem started, but irrespective of which IDE I use, it fails.

However, as I have seen in my travels of the interweb, things rarely get easier and these .Net things get in everywhere.

I simply posted that because as an attempt to resolve the problem I may install the new IDE and see what happens.

From the page:
Hello, this is a tweaked Arduino IDE, hope you enjoy it! If it works for you please leave a comment.

Download (2012-12-13):
setup_Arduino_ERW_1.0.3_20121213.zip (exe, no-java)

Less than 40 mb, for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7/8 (x86/x64), Requires .Net Framework 4.0 and nothing else required at all, no other app, package, drivers, just your arduino and brain. Want to keep me interested on improving our arduino experience?, so buy me a coffee/pepsi

From the page:
Hello, this is a tweaked Arduino IDE, hope you enjoy it! If it works for you please leave a comment.

Download (2012-12-13):
setup_Arduino_ERW_1.0.3_20121213.zip (exe, no-java)

Less than 40 mb, for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7/8 (x86/x64), Requires .Net Framework 4.0 and nothing else required at all, no other app, package, drivers, just your arduino and brain. Want to keep me interested on improving our arduino experience?, so buy me a coffee/pepsi

Well that is a 'tweaked IDE by a 3rd party, not an official arduino IDE release that one downloads from the Arduino site.

Lefty

retrolefty:
Well that is a 'tweaked IDE by a 3rd party, not an official arduino IDE release that one downloads from the Arduino site.

One of the many useful enhancements that Erwin Ried's tweaked version has is a wrapper for avrdude that resets the com port if there is a communication error ("port not found") when called by the IDE, which is probably the the leading cause of the "sync" problem, at least in Window systems.

The "sync" error from avrdude is pretty generic, and really just indicates it failed to get the response back it expected for whatever reason.

Surprisingly perhaps, Java has something of a checkered history, regarding being able to access serial ports reliably in a platform portable way. The saga dates back to the 1990s. Things weren't improved when Oracle decided a few years ago to drop support for the de facto standard method (commapi) that had been used for Java in Windows since then, possibly because the original solution originated from IBM way back when, although I'm not aware there was ever an "official" explanation from Oracle.

It appears the method (rxtxSerial) the "official" IDE uses still isn't particularly robust or reliable on many systems, unfortunately.

Well, just for the fun of it, I did the loop back test with the Official Arduino.

It works.

I see the RX/TX LEDs blinking away as I hit keys on they keyboard and get them echoed back.

I'm not sure if this is your case or not, but if you try to up-load a sketch to a chip with a Uno bootlader on it and you choose Duemilanove as the board, you will get the sync error, and vice-versa. Are you sure which bootloader each of the Freetronics boards has? Freetronics claims that both boards should be treated as Unos. Is there any chance the bootloaders got changed?

Now that is a good question.

I went to someone's place and they are an Arduino fanatic.

We/they tried just about everything.

What they also did was took a working 328/238/what ever from one of their boards and it will flash.

Mine in their board won't.

BUT!

If they try to upload the 128 bootstrap, it loads and we can flash it.
Not too good though as it is the OTHER chip.

They finally put their hands up and said: Dunno.

So I am still stuck.

TWO different arduinos.

One from Freetronics and one GENUINE UNO.
(Same type of chip)

NEITHER WILL FLASH NOR WILL EITHER HAVE THEIR BOOT LOADER FLASHED.

They sat there for a long time building the ISP thingy to flash the boot loader.

No luck.

So I still have two lemons.

:frowning:

So I still have two lemons.

Could be, but there is always the possibility of what we called in the Air Force, a short between the headsets. :wink:

Lefty

Yeah, maybe.

But I have tried.

Someone who loves/lives Arduino has tried and we both have not got results.

There have been 6 computers tried.
NONE of them work, but do work with other Arduinos.