It was detected when I first installed the ide, but I was having some errors and only thing I did was installing sparkFun boards and selecting arduino pro micro as the board and then it just disappeard, there are no ports now. It also doesn't show up in lsusb.
I am using linux, I tried deleting .arduinoIDE, .arduino15 and Arduino folders in the home directory and I reset the board. I connected a button next to rst and pushed it, the yellow light went off and on, did it multiple times but no luck. I am using the same usb cable I did before.
Hi @furkankurt. Due to the USB stack running on the same ATmega32U4 microcontroller as your sketch on the Pro Micro, it is possible for code in your sketch to break the USB functionality, which can lead to the sort of error you report.
Fortunately, the program that handles uploads (bootloader) is stored in a separate section of memory and can not be broken by the sketch code.
The only tricky thing is that the bootloader has to be activated at just the right time during the upload. Normally this is done by some special code that runs in the background of your sketch code recognizing a 1200 baud connection as the signal to reset the microcontroller and start the bootloader. However, in your current situation, that system won't work so you'll need to manually reset the board to activate the bootloader.
You need to get the timing right. If you do the reset too early, the bootloader will have already timed out by the time the upload starts. The tricky thing is that when you press the "Upload" button in Arduino IDE, it first compiles your sketch before starting the actual upload. So you need to wait until after the compilation finishes before resetting the board.
Try this:
Prepare some way to reset your Pro Micro by momentarily connecting the RST pin to the GND pin. This could be done with a wire or even some metal tweezers.
Select Sketch > Upload from the Arduino IDE menus.
Watch the black console window at the bottom of the Arduino IDE window until you see something like this:
Sketch uses 444 bytes (1%) of program storage space. Maximum is 30720 bytes.
Global variables use 9 bytes (0%) of dynamic memory, leaving 2039 bytes for local variables.
Maximum is 2048 bytes.
Immediately reset the Arduino board by momentarily connecting and disconnecting the RST pin to the GND pin twice.
After that, the sketch should upload successfully.
If the problem persists after a successful upload, you know there is something in your sketch that is breaking the USB functionality. You can verify this by uploading the File > New Sketch sketch, after which the board should be recognized by your computer and you should be able to upload normally. If the problem is in your sketch, you will need to find out what it is in your sketch breaking the USB code.
Now that you know how to recover your board, that should be manageable.