Toated Arduino?

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hello All,

I have been working on a NERF gun mod with my arduino, and all of a sudden it stopped working! The board powers on, and the power light (green), and an orange light indicated as "L" on the board stays on. I had been using a 12volt battery to power the board very successfully for the last week.

The board in question is an Arduino UNO SMD Edition R2. Im using windows 7 64 bit.

I have read on the website that I need to jump pin 5 and 6 on the 8u2 connector to put the board into DFU mode so I can use FLIP to reprogram it. I am having no luck with this, Windows doesn't recognize the device at all.

Have I toasted my board? Any suggestions?

2

I have been working on a NERF gun mod with my arduino,

This probably makes sense to you, but personally I don't understand what anything NERF related has to do with Arduino... can you expand a little bit on how attaching some foam to the Arduino would cause a problem?

3

Does either of the ATMega's feel warm? That's usually a sign that an output pin or two is blown, or the chip in total.

4

Neither of them feel warm to the touch. Any other methods to confirm the board is dead?

5

Well, you could try connecting Tx to Rx, see if the serial port will mimic back what you send; if '328 is not interfering on the port,will tell you the USB chip is okay. Am guessing that won't work if the PC doesn't see the USB tho.

Next hardware purchase, try this instead:
http://www.nkcelectronics.com/arduino-runtime-board-rev-b.html
All parts needed can be found at www.dipmicro.com really inexpensively.
Put the uController in a socket.

For programming:
http://www.nkcelectronics.com/breakout-board-for-ft232rl-usb-to-ser232.html
or this
http://www.nkcelectronics.com/ftdi-basic-breakout.html
Make a 6-pin cable that can plug from one to the other for downloading sketches: Vcc, Gnd, Reset, Tx, Rx,

Or use an ISP programmer
http://www.nkcelectronics.com/pocket-avr-programmer.html
This one comes with a 10pin to 6pin cable to plug onto the UCSP header.

Then if some accident happens again during development you only need replace the ATMega328 (or 168 if you decide you can live with less memory).
With the programmer you can also easily download bootloaders, so you don't need to buy blank parts and save a few dollars. 3-4 projects and it pays for itself.
http://www.newark.com/atmel/atmega328p-pu/ic-8bit-mcu-megaavr-20mhz-dip-28/dp/15R0268

I bought a tube of 10, planning ahead some and also taking advantage of the price break.