Hey, everyone! Having a hell of a time with this Elegoo Arduino car kit I bought off of Amazon.
I followed the (badly written) instructions to the letter, but the images they provided of the boards weren't the same boards I have to work with.
Now that it's done, I can't even upload a simple Blink program to it; I just keep getting the repeated error:
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0xee
It does that 10 times and then says "problem uploading to board".
What I've tried:
Uninstalling/Reinstalling the driver.
Downloading/Installing the driver for the cheap Chinese knockoff chip I realize I got (CH341SER).
Punched the wall repeatedly.
Lay awake at night for hours because every time I close my eyes, I see "problem uploading to board" behind my eyelids.
Now I'm coming here in the desperate hope that you guys can help me. My system config is as follows:
Board - ATMEGA328P
Computer - ASUS ROG (Windows 10)
I'm a super-noobie at this stuff, so use small words and let me know what other information you need.
You haven't linked the instructions, so we can't comment on that.
Driver is working, something else is not.
Could be anything, hardware failure, wrong board selected (try telling it it's a nano, pro mini, or official uno), wrong bootloader present on chip, no bootloader present on chip, board has been sawn in half and the side with the microcontroller discarded.
The sync error contains very little useful information, so it's a real pain to help people with. That's why you don't get much response on it. The forum is filled with people asking for help with it, and really all you can do is give a laundry list of possibilities and tell them to figure out which one it is.
When uploading, do you see the LED on pin 13 blinking twice? This indicates that the chip has been reset, and that it is working correctly. If it doesn't, then your chip might be dead, or it has the wrong bootloader installed, or just no bootloader at all.
Every time the chip resets, a small program, called the bootloader, is executed. Its purpose is to receive new sketches, and write them to the internal memory.
When you hit 'upload' in the Arduino IDE, it resets the Arduino, and then tells the bootloader that a new sketch has to be uploaded. The bootloader should then respond that it is ready to receive the new sketch. The error you get is just telling you that the computer doesn't receive a reply from the bootloader, so it can't upload.
As DrAzzy said, there's a whole list of possible causes, making it really hard to troubleshoot ...
It could be because you connected something to pins 0 and/or 1, because the microcontroller is just dead, because it doesn't have the right bootloader, because the computer expects the wrong response because you selected the wrong board in the Tools menu, etc ...
We could check the wiring, yes, but there's probably more to it than just the wiring ... Anyway, it would be a step in the right direction if we could rule bad wiring out.
There's probably something connected to pins 1 and 0. Those pins are used for the communication with the PC as well, so you can't use them while uploading, or while using the Serial class in your sketch.
This is not a problem with the board, it's normal.
The Arduino uses pins 0 and 1 (UART0, or Serial) to communicate with the on-board USB-To-Serial converter. This means that in order to upload a new program to the Arduino, you need these pins. If you connect anything else to pins 0 and 1, it will interfere with the upload.
To communicate with the shield, you also need UART0, so you have to connect it to pins 0 and 1. That's fine, as long as you disconnect it when uploading new programs.
Just for anyone that's having this problem. It states in the instruction manual that you cannot upload a program while the Bluetooth module is connected. The problem may be that it instructs you to upload your program, then on the next page it informs you about the error.
