After a day of tinkering with my Arduino Nano, I think I have somehow damaged the USB connector and can no longer make it connect to my PC. When I plug it in there are no lights on the board, and my PC does not detect the device at all.
The Nano its self appears to still function, when it is powered via the 5v and GND pins it lights up and interfaces with my hardware as it should for the last sketch I had uploaded to it. It seems to just be the USB connector which are dead. I can't see any damage at all to the Nano and honestly have no idea what happened (I disconnected an external LED from pin13 and heard that familiar "USB device disconnected windows" sound, and haven't been able to get it going via USB since). My other Arduino is still connecting to the PC fine, so the PC is OK.
I am wondering if there is a way to upload a sketch to the board without using the USB connection? Something similar to burning a bootloader to it using another Arduino as ISP (which I have done before, and do have another Arduino which I can use for this purpose).
I'm hoping I haven't turned it into a teeny-tiny brick.
Cheers in advance for any help!
You might be able to do a little basic troubleshooting if you have access to a digital multimeter. The USB +5vdc is isolated from the board's 5vdc bus by a diode D1. See if after you plug in the USB if you have +5vdc on the anode side of the diode but not on the cathode side which would indicate an open diode.
As far as using the ISP method of programming the arduino board that is pretty simple using a hardware programmer or another arduino board running the arduinoISP sketch and then using the IDE's file menu option of upload sketch using programmer option.
I'm rather new and inexperienced when it comes to electronics. I do have a multimeter, but I'm not sure where the diode is that I'm looking for, or how exactly to check it.
Using another Arduino as ISP looks to be a simple option to me. So I gather the steps for programming this way are:
Connect the ICSP pins to the working Arduino as I did for burning the bootloader.
Set the IDE to the board type for the board I want to program (Nano w/ATmega328 in my case)
Hopefully I'm right and spelling it out will help any other newbie like myself to find the solution too.
It would be nice if I could get the USB to work, but even if I can find the faulty part I think I have slightly less than no chance of being able to remove the dead part and solder on a new one, given how small everything is, and my very limited soldering experience.
Your ISP procedure steps sound correct. If you don't want to tie up another arduino board running the arduino ISP sketch to program your nano all the time you could always buy an inexpensive USBasb hardware programmer such as this one:
Colour me interested! But for now I have my UNO which I like to keep handy for breadboard testing rather than installing in a project, so it will be easily available for programming the Nano.
retrolefty:
You might be able to do a little basic troubleshooting if you have access to a digital multimeter. The USB +5vdc is isolated from the board's 5vdc bus by a diode D1. See if after you plug in the USB if you have +5vdc on the anode side of the diode but not on the cathode side which would indicate an open diode.
As far as using the ISP method of programming the arduino board that is pretty simple using a hardware programmer or another arduino board running the arduinoISP sketch and then using the IDE's file menu option of upload sketch using programmer option.
Lefty
Hm ok I got an Open Diode....
What happens when I remove it?
Can I still use the Nano?