Arduino Nano 33 BLE damaged?

Official Hardware Nano Family Nano 33 BLE
1

Hey guys,

I uploaded a code on my Nano 33 BLE and after that nothing happend expect the orange led (programmable led) started blinking in a rythm. In Addition my compter won't recognize the seriell port of the arduino anymore. Ideas what happend?

Thanks for help!

2

A 4X long, 4X short blink pattern indicates the Mbed OS operating system of the Nano 33 BLE has crashed. This causes the USB code that creates the CDC serial port to stop running, thus no serial port.

You can recover the board from this by putting it in bootloader mode:

  1. Press and release the reset button on your board quickly twice.
    You should now see the LED on the board pulsing, which means the bootloader is running. It will stay in this state until the board is reset, powered off, or an upload is done.
  2. Select the port of your board from the Arduino IDE's Tools > Port menu.
    :exclamation: The port will be different when the bootloader is running so don't assume you already have the correct port selected.
  3. Select Sketch > Upload from the Arduino IDE menus.

The upload should now complete successfully. However, if you upload the same sketch you were running when you had the problem, it will probably just occur again. You will need to figure out what part of the sketch is crashing MbedOS. Now that you know how to recover the board from a crash, you can start working on that.

Troubleshooting Mbed OS crash

One thing that will crash Mbed OS is doing analogWrite on too many pins at the same time.

Debug information is printed on Serial1 when Mbed OS crashes. You can view the debug output by following these instructions (no guarantee it will be helpful though):

  1. Unplug your Nano 33 BLE board from the computer or power supply.
  2. Make the following connections between a USB to TTL serial adapter (AKA "FTDI") and your Nano 33 BLE:
    Adapter Nano 33 BLE
    RX TX1
    GND GND
  3. You will also need to power the Nano 33 BLE.
    You can do this via the USB socket, or power it from the USB to TTL serial adapter's VCC pin.
    If the serial adapter's VCC pin is outputting 5 V, connect it to the Nano 33 BLE's VIN pin. If the serial adapter's VCC pin is outputting 3.3 V, connect it to the Nano 33 BLE's 3.3 V pin.
  4. Connect the serial adapter to your computer with a USB cable.
  5. Select the port of the serial adapter from the Arduino IDE's Tools > Port menu.
  6. Select Tools > Serial Monitor from the Arduino IDE menus.
  7. Set the baud rate menu at the bottom right corner of Serial Monitor to "115200".
  8. Press and release the reset button on the Nano 33 BLE.

You should now see the "MbedOS Error Info" output in the Serial Monitor output field.

2 Likes
3

"Press and release the reset button on your board quickly twice."

Thank you! This saved me on Arduino Nano 33 IoT - sketch was taking over serial port and wouldn't let IDE upload new one. Tapping the reset twice enabled forced upload and now I have my device back.