Hi all,
This is my first post - I’m a mechanical engineer trying to get the hang of electronics for the first time so please don’t be too harsh!
First a bit of pre-amble - does this forum like pre-amble? I can’t guess but here goes: I’m living in the United Republic of Tanzania trying to make an improved biodigester. Biodigesters are basically these devices that allow bacteria to convert cow manure into a flammable gas (biogas!). This means that subsistence farmers can get easy access to free cooking fuel instead of trekking for hours a day to find firewood, or spend 20% of their income on charcoal - amongst many other benefits. (See here for more info: aidg.org/biodigesters.htm) So far biodigesters have always been pretty badly designed because they don’t take into account the user’s needs. I suspect that the current design is massively over-engineered. I want to hook up a load of pressure sensors to a few biodigesters installed in family homes to record their gas usage habits over a number of weeks. The results of this should help to reduce the cost of biodigesters by about 50% allowing more farmers to be able to afford one. Problem is the project budget is pretty low at this stage and I can’t afford all the super-expensive data loggers I’d ideally like to have. So I read that the Seeeduino Stalker can be used as an autonomous data logger and I bought one (with an ATmega 168 processor) along with a Uart_SB to find out.
Enough pre-amble.
I decided I’ve probably jumped in at the deep end and I could do with starting from the beginning, so I’ve bought an Arduino starter pack. I’ve always wanted to get in the whole electronics scene anyway. Unfortunately it usually takes a couple of months post stuff out here, and I was hoping someone might be able to help me get started in a basic way with the Stalker.
I’ve downloaded this tutorial file for the Seeeduino, called “Hello Seeeduino”. It’s great, I got the drivers and the software installed and the pretty lights come on and everything. Unfortunately I can’t seem to upload the blink sketch. The symptoms of the problem after pressing “upload” are as follows:
- Arduino software indicates “Uploading to I/O board”
- A few red lights blink on the board here and there (I can be more specific if it would help with diagnosis)
- A few seconds pass and the Arduino software prints the “binary sketch size” to be 896 bytes
- A few more seconds pass (and a few more lights blink on the board) and the software prints a load of text. I’ve pasted the text in at the bottom of this post
And that’s it.
A few notes on my attempts to repair (with help from the Arduino troubleshooting files)
- I am using Windows Vista SP2 (sorry)
- I am using Arduino Alpha 0018
- I have selected the correct COM port (number 24 as per the settings in my control panel)
- Under tools>board in the Arduino software there is no option for Seeeduino Stalker, so I tried all the ones that say ATmega168 on them to no avail.
- I disable my firewall
- I pressed all the buttons a flipped all the switches in several different combinations on the Uart_SB and the Stalker before trying to upload again (Jeez what a noob!)
- I have not been able to follow any instructions related to PINs and other hardware diagnosis checks. Let’s just say I got it out of the box and tried not to touch too many things, so you probably have a better idea than me about its current state.
There’s every chance this is happening because I’m following a Seeeduino tutorial, not a Seeeduino Stalker specific one, and so I’ve missed a couple of details in setting up (e.g. how should the switches on the Uart_SB be set?). If anyone does know whether a Stalker tutorial exists I would be very grateful to be pointed in its general direction.
Thank you very much in advance for any help that you can offer.
Best regards,
Ed
[size=85]This is the text that printed after I clicked on upload (I pressed shift to get the verbose output):[/size]
[size=85]Binary sketch size: 896 bytes (of a 14336 byte maximum)
C:\Users\Eddie\Desktop\arduino-0018\hardware/tools/avr/bin/avrdude -CC:\Users\Eddie\Desktop\arduino-0018\hardware/tools/avr/etc/avrdude.conf -v -v -v -v -patmega168 -cstk500v1 -P\.\COM24 -b19200 -D -Uflash:w:C:\Users\Eddie\AppData\Local\Temp\build7734768847572971400.tmp\Blink.cpp.hex:i
avrdude: Version 5.4-arduino, compiled on Oct 11 2007 at 19:12:32
Copyright © 2000-2005 Brian Dean, bdmicro.com/
System wide configuration file is "C:\Users\Eddie\Desktop\arduino-0018\hardware/tools/avr/etc/avrdude.conf"
Using Port : \\.\COM24
Using Programmer : stk500v1
Overriding Baud Rate : 19200
avrdude: ser_open(): setting dtr
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: Send: Q [51] [20]
avrdude: Recv:
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51
avrdude done. Thank you.
[/size]
