OK. I'm not a complete newbie to arduino or mcu's. I have been programming pics for more than a decade and have been tinkering with arduino now for a little more than 2 years. I recently decided to give the mkr1010 a go. This thing needs some serious attention.
Every time I connect the thing it works for a few minutes and then suddenly the PC decides to no longer recognize it and I have to restart the computer to fix it. I have never had this problem with any other mcu (including the ubiquitous uno).
I have tried to update the firmware thinking that might be the problem, but after loading the firmwareupdater sketch and trying to update the firmware, it crashed yet again. This time I get a nifty error : Updater error - Error while erasing flash memory.
So here's the question I have for you guys that are more familiar with these devices than I am: is this just an unstable piece of junk? Is there some way of pushing the firmware update without the ide and without having to purchase the atmel programmer? Should I just give up and go back to pics?
mityeltu:
Every time I connect the thing it works for a few minutes and then suddenly the PC decides to no longer recognize it and I have to restart the computer to fix it. I have never had this problem with any other mcu (including the ubiquitous uno).
The Arduino Nano 33 BLE and IoT and your MKR have native USB. This allows new applications but has some serious drawbacks. During development, every time you reprogram the sketch the USB port is reset. Even worse, if your code is doing something stupid that stops the USB stack from working you loose the connection to your PC. You can save the day by double clicking the reset button which will set your Arduino to bootloader mode with its own USB configuration.
Old Arduino boards have a separate chip that stays connected to the PC no matter what your code does.
mityeltu:
I have tried to update the firmware
That was not a smart move, your firmware was fine. There are a few posts about firmware update issue in this and the Arduino Nano 33 IoT sub forum. Please have a look.
mityeltu:
is this just an unstable piece of junk?
I played with the Arduino Nano 33 IoT which is like the little brother of your MKR. It works fine and with the SAMD21 coming from Microchip/ATMEL it looks like a PIC for grown ups.
mityeltu:
Should I just give up and go back to pics?
Well, do you want to grow up or play with baby toys for the rest of your life? The world has moved on and with your experience you can too. Do not give up.
First - I tried several times to perform the dbl click of the reset button - no joy. While the board appears to have reset, the unrecognized condition of the board persisted. The only solution at every event was to restart the pc. That is not really an acceptable method as this communications path is somewhat necessary.
Second - In my personal opinion, programming pics requires much more in-depth knowledge of the controller in order to make it useful. To perform any useful functions, the programmer must have intimate knowledge of the various layers and the multitudinous registers that control each of the input/output functions. Coding for the pic is, again in my opinion, more serious than the arduino with all its preconstructed libraries. This, in my opinion, makes it a very suitable alternative for the novice, but not the professional. That being said, the arduino has its place. It makes development much faster, but for any seriously time critical applications, the arduino, as it stands, requires too many work-arounds. Personally, I hope the post to which this response applies was tongue-in-cheek, but I was not able to determine it from the timbre.
Third - As I am not involved in the open-source development of this platform in any way, does anyone know if there are plans to "fix" this problem? Looking around it appears to be a common issue. Normally, when there is a common problem, someone begins working on it to solve the problem as oppose to simply saying, well, just deal with it.
Thank you for the responses. as the native usb appears to be the offending entity, and I do not see any direct access to the usb pins on the controller, is anyone aware of a method of bypassing this onboard usb connectivity? Again, I don't own an atmel programmer and have no interest in obtaining one, so I am not looking to begin breadboarding with the atmel mcus, but my experience with the pics allows me direct access to these pins and it's an easy process to set up usb serial communications - not a usb stack per se, but using a usb serial interface - similar, no doubt, to the current configuration, but this one would be under my own design and control.
You are very optimistic about open source software. There are projects that are very active but also many that do not get a lot of attention after some time. With Arduino I think they have a lot of things to do and not enough time to solve all issues in a short amount of time. So, sometimes it better to deal with the issue.
I have been working with PICs for a couple of years professionally, and I would not recommend them for hobby use anymore.
You need the same knowledge and then some to make use of the microcontroller used on Arduino boards for a professional application. Arduino is a software framework for hobbyists with some starter boards. The libraries are too simple to be used for most professional applications, even though I would not be surprised if some products use Arduinos inside.
I appreciate that. I agree, without the arduino platform, the knowledge required to facilitate any application using the Atmel chip is effectively identical. That being said, I guess I expected more stability from a product sold in the general marketplace as a tool for application development. If I were a hobbyist, this would be extremely disappointing. It makes development more difficult when there are so many ghosts in the machine. Troubleshooting becomes difficult as your not sure if you're chasing a flaw in your code/hardware or something inherent in the development platform.
Anyway, I might not recommend pic for the hobbyist, but it is perfect for almost every aspect of my professional applications.
