Beginning Arduino Project 42

Projects General Guidance
1

I am working through Beginning Arduino to try and understand how to use the Arduino UNO. Is there an Beginning Arduino Forum?
I have been successful in monitoring DS18B20 sensors and writing to a file on my computer.
I would now like to write to an SD card as per Project 42, however having written the code as per the book, I get;

Type any character to start
error: card.init failed
SD error: 1, 0

I am not able to find anything to help resolve this issue. Can anybody help me?

For the record, I am using;
Arduino UNO
arduino-0023 and arduino-1.0
SD = KINGMAX microSDHC class4 8GB

2

For the benefit of those of us without access to the book, can you post your code?

3

// Project 42
// Based on the SD Fat examples by Bill Greiman from sdfatlib

#include <SdFat.h>
#include <SdFatUtil.h>

Sd2Card card;
SdVolume volume;
SdFile root;
SdFile file;

// store error strings in flash to save RAM
#define error(s) error_P(PSTR(s))
void error_P(const char* str) {
PgmPrint("error: ");
SerialPrintln_P(str);
if (card.errorCode()) {
PgmPrint("SD error: ");
Serial.print(card.errorCode(), HEX);
Serial.print(',');
Serial.println(card.errorData(), HEX);
}
while(1);
}

// Write a Carriage Return and Line Feed to the File
void writeCRLF(SdFile& f) {
f.write((uint8_t*)"\r\n", 2);
}

// Write an unsigned number to file
void writeNumber(SdFile& f, uint32_t n) {
uint8_t buf[10];
uint8_t i = 0;
do {
i++;
buf[sizeof(buf) - i] = n%10 + '0';
n /= 10;
} while (n);
f.write(&buf[sizeof(buf) - i], i);
}

// Write a string to file
void writeString(SdFile& f, char *str) {
uint8_t n;
for (n = 0; str[n]; n++);
f.write((uint8_t *)str, n);
}

void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
Serial.println();
Serial.println("Type any character to start");
while (!Serial.available());

// initialize the SD card at SPI_HALF_SPEED to avoid bus errors with breadboards.
// Use SPI_FULL_SPEED for better performance if your card can take it.
if (!card.init(SPI_HALF_SPEED)) error("card.init failed");

// initialize a FAT volume
if (!volume.init(&card)) error("volume.init failed");

// open the root directory
if (!root.openRoot(&volume)) error("openRoot failed");

// create a new file
char name[] = "TESTFILE.TXT";
file.open(&root, name, O_CREAT | O_EXCL | O_WRITE);
// Put todays date and time here
file.timestamp(2, 2012, 06, 07, 24, 00, 00);

// write 10 lines to the file
for (uint8_t i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
writeString(file, "Line: ");
writeNumber(file, 1);
writeString(file, " Write test.");
writeCRLF(file);
}

// close file and force write of all data to the SD card
file.close();
Serial.println("File Created");

// open a file
if (file.open(&root, name, O_READ)) {
Serial.println(name);
}
else{
error("file.open failed");
}
Serial.println();

int16_t character;
while ((character = file.read()) > 0) Serial.print((char)character);

Serial.println("\nDone");
}

void loop() {}

4

It is failing to initialize your card.
I've used SD cards before and sometimes they are finicky. Once I had to try 2 different cards before one worked.
Make sure it is properly formatted. For example, if you are using it with a Wave Shield, it needs to be formatted as FAT16. See more info at Adafruit. Audio Shield for Arduino - Format SD card

5

I had done a format on the card a number of times, both quick and full.
I realized that it had failed to initialize, but I did not know how to interpret the error message as to why this had happened.
Let me try another card in a while.