SOLVED: Can my Arduino Uno be brought back to life?

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hi all.
My Arduino Uno is acting funny after I played around with my new 2.8 tft shield (ili9338). When plugged into a USB port, the power led on the Arduino lights up. So does the pin-13 led which then stays on. The Arduino is recognized by my computer, but I can not upload any code to it (the software (Arduino 1.6.7 tries to upload a sketch but fails with the following error: avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding). Same problem occur at other computers.
If I touch the metal on the Arduinos USB-connector and pin 19 on the Atmega socket at the same time, the pin-13 led turns off regardless whether the Atmega chip is in the socket or not. If I remove my fingers, the pin-13 led goes back on. The led also turns off if I connect pin 13 to GND.

  1. Do you think the Arduino is dead beyond repair?
  2. Have any of you experienced problems after using a tft shield? Could it have damaged the Arduino by e.g. pulling too much current?

Thanks a lot for any suggestions!

2

When you try to upload a sketch do the RX and TX lights do anything?

3

johnwasser, thanks a lot for your reply.
The RX blinks three times when the PC starts to upload. After that there is nothing from the RX or TX

4

AndreasNielsen:
The RX blinks three times when the PC starts to upload. After that there is nothing from the RX or TX

Seems likely that the PC is trying three times to send a command to the Arduino bootloader and get a response. Since the Arduino bootloader is not responding there are a few common possibilities:

  1. You have Tools->Board set wrong for the bootloader in your Arduino. Different bootloaders use different baud rates. If the Arduino bootloader and PC don't agree on the baud rate the Arduino will not recognize the commands and therefore won't respond. Double-check your Board setting.
  2. The Arduino did not reset when the serial connection was established. The bootloader only waits a short time after reset for an upload command before giving control to the previously uploaded sketch. Failure to auto-reset may be a hardware problem on the Arduino or sometimes a setting problem in the PC. Try a manual reset: holding the Reset button down until you see the first RX blink.
  3. The bootloader has been corrupted. You can fix that by uploading a fresh bootloader. You should order a USBasp or USBtinyISP from eBay. The cost is about $5. Make sure you get one with a 6-pin cable or get a 10-pin to 6-pin adapter.
5

Or option 4, you blow the crap out of the ATmega... Then just insert a new ATmega. If you buy a blank you have to program the bootloader yourself (with a programmer or another Arduino) But you can also buy one already with the bootloader.

Touching pin19 together with GND (which is what the USB can is) you just pull the output low. Because the Uno uses a comparator you only need very little current to do so.

6

Thanks again johnwasser and septillion. I used my Duemilanove as ISP and uploaded a fresh bootloader to the Uno via the Arduino IDE. Everything worked perfectly and the Uno is back to life!
I suppose something went wrong when I uploaded a 2.8 inch tft sketch to the Uno in the first place.

Can I accept your answers somehow in this forum?

7

AndreasNielsen:
Can I accept your answers somehow in this forum?

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