Port not found/NICLA SENSE ME [not connected]

Hello everyone,

I am having trouble connecting my Nicla Sense ME to the Arduino IDE (tried both 1.8.xx and 2.0.xx).

I have the Arduino Mbed OS Nicla Boards library installed as per instructions by the Nicla Sense ME Cheat Sheet (https://docs.arduino.cc/tutorials/nicla-sense-me/cheat-sheet#core) and still have no connection.

I have successfully used Uno, Nano, Nano Every, MKR 1310, and they still successfully connect (They are all genuine Arduino products bought directly from their store). I have tried switching micro-USB cables to known good ones and still no luck.

When plugging in, the Sense board has a blue LED that blinks three times and then goes out completely. I read that I can double-tap the reset button twice to access the bootloader, but I have no idea what to do once that happens...

Any help would be really appreciated.

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Hi @mechanical_maker. In order to gather more information that might help us to troubleshoot your problem, I'm going to ask you to try a quick experiment and then report the results:

  1. Press and release the reset button on your Arduino Nicla Sense ME board quickly twice.
  2. Reply in a comment here on the forum to tell us whether or not the LED next to the button at the rounded corner on your board started blinking with the following sequence after you did the double reset:
    • Green three times
    • Red forever
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Thanks in0!

When I press the reset button twice quickly it flashes the green LED three times and then the red flashes at the same rate continuously until power is removed.

OK, that is a good sign. It means the microcontroller is in a functional condition and with a bootloader.

Now try this:"

  1. Press and release the reset button on your board quickly twice, as you did before.
  2. Open the Tools > Port menu in the Arduino IDE.
  3. You should see a port that is labeled "(Nicla Sense ME)". Click on it.
  4. Select Sketch > Upload from the Arduino IDE menus.

Hopefully the sketch will be uploaded successfully. After this, you should be able to upload to the board without the need to do the double reset every time. Just make sure you select the correct port from the Tools > Port menu in the Arduino IDE.

If you still need to do the reset trick to do uploads after this, the problem may be caused by your sketch code. You can verify this by uploading a simple sketch like File > Examples > 01.Basics > BareMinimum. If the problem goes away after uploading that "known good" sketch, then you know that something in your sketch code is interfering with the upload process.

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Okay, so I have the blinking red LED.

But in the Arduino IDE under the Tools menu, the Port option is still greyed out and not selectable.

I did notice after deleting are re-downloading the IDE I am being prompted with a few errors when I install the Mbed OS Nicla Boards Library.

They are displayed as:

Invalid library found in C:\Users\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino\libraries\CheapStepper: no headers files (.h) found in C:\Users\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino\libraries\CheapStepper
Invalid library found in C:\Users\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino\libraries\examples: no headers files (.h) found in C:\Users\OneDrive\Documents\Arduino\libraries\examples

Those are unrelated to your problem. The IDE shows you this warning whenever you have something in your libraries folder that is not a valid library.

But it doesn't actually cause any problems to have them there, other than that the library won't be recognized by the Arduino IDE. That would result in a "file not found" error during compilation. An "invalid library" would never be able to cause the lack of port symptom you are experiencing.

Okay! I appreciate the insight!

Fixed the issue.

I went down and bought two more micro USB cables. One connected the other did not.

For some unknown reason to me, the cable that works with my MKR Wan 1310 does not work for the Nicla Sense ME.

But I am connected and now running the IMU with roll pitch and yaw!!

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I'm glad to hear you found the problem. Thanks for taking the time to post an update with your solution.

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