Project 01 - LED doesn't light up.

[adele]

Hi,

I just received the starter kit today. I'm new to Arduino and I'm having problems getting the first project to work. I'm supposed to press the button and the LED will light up, but when I press the button, nothing happens.

I used my LED tester to make sure the LED was working. I tried swapping to a different LED, and to a different resister. I am having a hard time telling the difference between the colors in the book and on the resister, so I'm not even sure that I'm using the 220-ohm resister.

It looks like I have everything hooked up the correct way-it looks the same as the book image as far as I can tell, except, I'm using orange wires instead of brown, because I didn't get any brown wires with my kit for some reason.

I also sent a test program and modified the Blink program to make sure that the Arduino board was working.

I swapped the switch with a different one to make sure that wasn't broken.

I took a picture of my setup. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Edit: I've also just tried using a 9-volt battery as the power source and it doesn't work with that either.

Thanks.

[groundFungus]

the only thing that comes to mind, is the LED polarity correct?  flat side to gnd.

[adele]

Hi,

I have the anode on row 13, and the cathode on row 14. I believe that's how the book has it.

What happens if I use the wrong size resistor? It just won't work? I think I have the 220-ohm, but I can't tell for sure. I have a 5 band, because I don't see and 220-ohm 4 band resisters in my kit.

[groundFungus]

220 ohm is red red brown.  reverse the LED and try it.  it won't hurt anything to try.

[adele]

I'm using the 5 band resister, it appears to be red red brown brown.

I figured out the problem, after looking very closely at the book. You probably can't tell in my picture, but I had the resister going from row 8 to ground. I figured that out after I tried using different parts on a different breadboard and it still didn't work. I moved the resister to row 8 to + and it works fine now. It looked like the book had it in the ground at first.

I guess I learned something new already. :-)

Is it okay, if I cut the LEDs and resisters down? The pins are really long and hard to manage. I usually end up bending them all up. I'm thinking they would be easier to work with, if they were shorter, but I'm not sure what that will do.

Thanks for the help!

[groundFungus]

they are your parts so cut as needed.  the resistor is probably red red brown gold.  gold in the forth band means the resistor tolerance is 5% (silver for 10%).

[adele]

Ok, thanks for the help. I just wasn't sure if cutting them would damage them in some way.

[heccblack]

check the driver.is not so frequent that your hardware and led light would break down

[twelch]

it may be a shadow but it looks like both ends of your loop are connected to the ground bus

[steveng]

Have you tried plug the short-leg in to pin GND and Long-leg in to pin 13.  Pin 13 has a built in reisistors. Upload the blink programme. It should work.

Make sure that you have the com serial port and the USB sync, If they are not in sync you will get an error like. 0x30.

It looks like you dont have 5volts going to the breadboard.  You need 9 volts or USB to power the arduino.  When you have power going to the Arduino via usb, the TX and RX lights will flicker. If the lights come on, the the Arduino is working. If not, It could be a Hardware problem.



http://www.bphttp://www.bpesolutions.com/atechnical/resistorqv.pdfesolutions.com/atechnical/resistorqv.pdf

Hope  it helps