I purchased the necessary parts for the bread board. I want to familiarize myself with programming microcontroller chips. When I plug in the usb - I have a bi-color led on pin 13 on the bread board flashing. First it'll flash 3 times then wait then flash 5 times then turns off. Would this be the initial boot or would this be the watchdog? I'll have to guess the Watchdog makes sure there's no errors in bootloader and that's why it's flashing?
Before a few hours ago - it wouldn't do that flashing thing! At first I thought I got a bad atmega328 optiboot chip. Also, I have a .1 microfarad capacitor on the reset pin and a 330 ohm resistor from the DTR jumper wire to the 5+. Do I need to increase the resistors ohm because I ordered 10K Ohm resistors but Sparkfun gave me 330 ohms. I didn't know if this was due to the flashing I saw on the bi-color led.
When I load blink from the examples - I make sure it's pointed to the right port and the right board. It's config to Arduino Uno and to the sparksfun com port. When I upload it - the verbose debug writes:
Using Port : \\.\COM9
Using Programmer : arduino
Overriding Baud Rate : 115200
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Recv:
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude done. Thank you.
After the avrdude done - the bi-color led flashes again...I'm guessing it reset itself?
I even tried to swap the TX from the usb to RX on PIN 0 and the RX on usb to PIN 1. Should I just do TX to TX, RX to RX?
So, this morning I tried another stab at it! It's making progress because by using the 100K pot conected to the DTR (USB to SERIAL) to the reset button...As well connecting the RX and TX to the 100k Pot. The response I'm getting is:
Using Port : \\.\COM9
Using Programmer : arduino
Overriding Baud Rate : 115200
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
avrdude: Recv: 0 [30]
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x30
Which in my eyes is getting better! Without the 10K Ohm resistor my life would've been easier but guess a 100K Pot will do for now. I'll keep posting on the progress!
Last night, I read the ATMEGA328 datasheet and I think the reason for my issue is that without a 10K resistor going to the reset pin - the chip isn't booting correctly and entering sleep mode. Which many has said on this forum that the timing has to be right! By using the 100K Pot - it's very hard to determine which is 10 K for me because I don't have a multimeter. I finally ordered a 10K resistor and hopefully the company sends it out right.
On the Ardunio Uno schematic there's a 1M resistor before the external 16 mhz crystal. Why is that? Another question on the TX and RX lines of the atmega8U2 there's a symbol which I can't make out - it looks like a resistor just before it goes into the RX and TX pins of the atmega328pu - am I seeing this right or is it non-important?
If I post this thread in the wrong spot then move it to the correct topic of interest! If it is in the right place - it would be nice if someone would comment and help another person out and guide me in the right direction. Thanks!
