Arduino Robot

I just go an Arduino Robot - my first experience with Arduino...

I've tried this both from a Mac and a Windows 8.1 machine...

Currently using 1.5 IDE

I successfully uploaded several of the example programs... they seemed to be working fine
After several successes the robot and IDE both seem to signal that a new example program was uploading - however now it seems stuck on a program that I uploaded several times ago - no matter what I try - reset - take batteries out - it reboots to a sketch I uploaded some time ago...

Any suggestions?
Sorry I Googled - searched various forums, but can't seem to fin what I'm looking for...

I have the same problem: Mac, tried even with IDE 1.0...can't change the actual program.
Looking for the solution

My problem is very similar. See my Post in this forum for more detail. I am running IDE 1.5.6-r2.

I find that: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Troubleshooting#toc19

in my case:
-the board selected is ok
-tried different usb cables
-tried the smallest sketch

if I try the last solutiom, “burn the latest version of the bootloader”, I have this error: "avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device "usb".
I'm trying to understand that part of the problem =(

(for now) I've solved rebooting the mac.

Hey guys,
We've been doing a bit more analysis on the returned units recently. Seems like almost all the problems of unable to upload are related to the same cause, and can be circumvented by a simple approach:

  1. Make sure you've selected the right port and board(Robot_Control in this case)
  2. Click the upload button in Arduino IDE
  3. The status bar in IDE will display "compiling...", wait until it changes to "uploading..."
  4. At this point, press the reset button on top of the control board twice
  5. The uploading should be successful

The problem wouldn't happen all the time, you just need to perform this approach when the robot gets stuck at uploading. There's no idea what causes it though, it appears randomly. We're still working on it.

currently I have the same problem on other Arduino boards, as: Micro, YUN

When i can't upload a sketch:

  1. press "reset" on the board
  2. click "upload" on the IDE
  3. wait untili it says "uploading"
  4. leave the reset button
  5. if it says "board at xxx is not available", click "upload" one more time (or two)

It always works for me.

xun_yang:

  1. Make sure you've selected the right port and board(Robot_Control in this case)
  2. Click the upload button in Arduino IDE
  3. The status bar in IDE will display "compiling...", wait until it changes to "uploading..."
  4. At this point, press the reset button on top of the control board twice
  5. The uploading should be successful

I had tried this process with some defective robots before returning them and found it very hard to get right: maybe got it to work one of ten times...

Maybe it's the way I was pressing the reset button twice. Can you elaborate on this? How long is each press: short, half a sec, 1sec, etc? How long do you have wait between presses: instantaneous, wait half a sec, etc.?

Oh, and did you try this process with Windows 8?

Step 3 and 4 are the most critical ones, usually it takes a few seconds for the compiling to complete(the status bar will stay as "compiling..." for some seconds), then the text changes to "uploading...". At this point you should press reset button on the control board twice(better to do it in a quick sequence, like double clicking). However the timing doesn't need to be super precise, I usually do it within 1~2 seconds after "Uploading..." starts to display.

@jarcand Which do you think is the most difficult step? I'm also using windows 8 for programming the robot, it doesn't have much problems

Hi,
I had the same problem with my new Robot. With your help it seems to be solved, but I don`t understand why.
Ingeborg

xun_yang:
@jarcand Which do you think is the most difficult step? I'm also using windows 8 for programming the robot, it doesn't have much problems

It's been months now since I tried this, but if I recall correctly, I was double-clicking on the reset button (Step 4) when the uploading message appeared, and 8-9 times out of 10 the upload failed and I had to restart the sequence.