i just got my arduino today so i decided to test it out buy writing some simple codes like blinking an LED
everything worked out great but every now and then the led goes out for 2-3 secs then everything when back to normal
do i have a defected arduino board or am i doing something stupid?
oh by the way i have a arduino duemilanove w/ atmega328
thx
after a reset its normal to have a few seconds waiting time but if you don't reset it manually (press the resetbutton, upload software or power it of and on) it shouldn't happen ... hmm, what led? the onboard one on pin 13? if you use another led it can be a simple connection problem or you made a mistake with your programming (randomnumbers or something like that)
Can you post your sketch and a drawing of your circuit?
It is very mentally draining to debug by telepathy 
no i didn't use the on board LED i used a random one i found lying around and i hooked it up in series with a 330 ohm resistor
how do i upload the schematics so it's not as mentally draining?
hmmm that's weird i pluged it in my mom's computer and it works perfectly... i guess there's something wrong with my usb port
in that case try a different usbcable or another usbport on your pc
how do i upload the schematics
Put them on a picture hosting site like Flicker and get the URL.
Then paste that URL between the brackets you get when you click the picture icon (third from the left) in the reply box.
Just a thought but have checked the board for loose components or even a dry joint.
Or perhaps there is too much electrical noise which is stalling the crystal osillator or even dust close to the oscillator affecting its load capacitance.
dust close to the oscillator affecting its load capacitance.
That has to be as lot of dust, possible three feet. :o
I would suspect that some software on your computer is periodically trying to open the serial port that it finds due to the arduino. Because of the auto-reset feature, this will cause the Arduino to reset, appearing as in otherwise inexplicable pause.
You can check for sure by something more noticable at the very beginning of your sketch (blinking the on-board LED a couple times rapidly, for instance.)
This wouldn't be completely unlikely behavior for cell phone or PDA sync software...
Lol I once had this problem with a big ball of dust which accumulated on the PCB near a high frequency section, it could have had a metallic residue in it.
Upon removal everything worked perfectly again.