Here is a quick video showing how to reset the Arduboy into bootloader mode.
You’ll need to press the reset button while Arduboy is attempting to upload code. The video gives a few good pointers be sure to watch the whole thing if you’ve got a problem with your Arduboy!
This worked for me, though I had to actually wait a few seconds (about 3-4) after hitting Reset before uploading.
When I started the upload immediately after Reset, nothing would happen.
@bateske I think you need to add this to the post. I think some computers take a while to see the device pop back up on the USB bus… so if you reset it and then don’t wait long enough there is no USB device to flash.
Am I wrong, or does the update to the latest Arduino IDE mean that units will no longer lose track of their entry point, and will no longer suffer from “bricking”?
The AVR core now recognizes if a new bootloader is present and uses a safe RAM location to trigger programming (this is particularly important for large sketches, like the ones produced by our friends at Arduboy)
I got that impression after reading the release notes yesterday, but didn’t investigate to confirm. The fact that they mention Arduboy in the IDE 1.6.9 release blog entry solidifies that this is the problem being addressed.
Of course, “bricking” (requiring using the reset button) will still be possible for other reasons, such as certain types of bugs in the sketch itself, but this fix in the IDE should prevent one of the most common and hard to solve problems.
What do they mean by “new bootloader”? I remember seeing one bootloader with the requested change but we didn’t implement it because it seemed unlikley Arduino would make this change to their IDE based on the history.
So, I don’t think we actually support this out of the box? We can change for the pre-order units and we can upgrade repaired units too…
actually I think I have bricked my Arduboy. I am using platformio but it seems that it allows me to flash more that the allowed 28672 bytes (I do not have the log anymore but it was above 28700). Now my little Arduboy sometimes starts the software that I flashed and sometimes the yellow/green leds near the USB port start flashing wildly. I tried all the above suggestions also from the other “bricked” threads but nothing works. I even made it to make the board into bootloader mode and tried to flash manually with avrdude without resetting (1200bps dance) but as soon as the bootloader kicks in the leds start blinking wildly. The after some time avrdude stops with errors. The leds keep blinking even without the USB cable connected. Only power cycle helps.
Now I think I need to flash the bootloader again.
I opened the device and found the 6 pins of interest. Is there any procedure how to attach there and flash the bootloader? Anything that I keep in mind while trying this?
I have an AVR MKII ISP that I could use for flashing. It will need some MacGyver like skills attaching to the pins.
Is there a reason to reset the device? You should only need to reset it if the software upload fails, or there are some bugs with the software that reloads.
If you plug it into your PC or Macbook and the device is not recognized then you should try to use a different USB cable that has support for data transfer (preferably something that you’ve used to transfer files before). If using different cables does not work and you are still on the original software then please contact us via the store page and we can try to help you out directly.
Both Arduino and Codebender will prevent you from trying to flash a file that is too large, I have no idea if this is baked into AVRdude and I’m not familiar enough with Platformio to make any suggestions there. I didn’t think it was technically possible to overwrite the bootloader memory space over USB (without some creative hacks to do it intentionally).
@veritazz if you could take a video and post it in a new thread of this behavior I think it would be helpful because I’ve not run into it before.
The pins required for re flashing have circles around them and are clearly labeled. You can use any online tutorial for flashing an arduino leonardo on the arduboy.
NOTE: We are currently using the leonardo bootloader but will likely switch to something custom in the future.
It seems that we need to update the bootloader to take advantages to the changes in arduino that will eliminate the bug related to programs taking up too much RAM. Still trying to dig into that one fully.
@Botisaurus Were you using platformio also? Or is it a more general error, let us know some more details and feel free to open a separate support thread with a video or picture if you want.
If the fuses were set properly at the factory to protect the program area used by the bootloader, it should be near impossible to overwrite or otherwise corrupt it in any way, regardless of the size of the sketch you’re trying to write, or what software you’re using to write it.
@bateske, You may wish to check how the fuses are being set in the Arduboy and how they compare to a Leonardo. The Leonardo uses LOW:0xFF HIGH:0xD8 EXTENDED:0xCB LOCK:0x2F
For bootloader protection the important ones are the HIGH and LOCK fuses.
Not sure the LOCK fuse was set It should be the same as leonardo but I can only confirm the other bits. Maybe these occurrences with platformio means it’s not, and we’ve get something more that can be fixed in our next batch…
Thanks to all for the help. I finally brought it back to life by reflashing the bootloader using an AVR MKII ISP and some wooden clothespin. It was quite a ride as the connections where not very stable but I could hold it until the write was finished.
Here are two videos when it was still bricked:
This is a video (could be also a picture) where I tried to flash the bootloader via the Arduino IDE. You need to select the leonardo board and choose Tools->Burn Bootloader (before that select the programmer you have, do not forget to switch on your Arduboy). Use Arduino IDE 1.6.9.
I do not know if the lock fuse is set. How can I read it? Avrdude prints this:
avrdude: safemode: lfuse reads as FF
avrdude: safemode: hfuse reads as D8
avrdude: safemode: efuse reads as CB
avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK (H:CB, E:D8, L:FF)
Oh boy… good job.
Sadly too complicated for me since i have no necessary equipment nor the knowledge to do that.
In addition to that my battery broke down (yeah i’m pretty talented) so i would need an replacement for that too and need to solder everything.