I can't upload anything anymore

Help & Information Issues
#1

I’m a user and would love it if advice is kept simple.

My Arduboy (gold early bird, don’t know what matters) currently has Team A.R.G.'s great Virus game loaded. I can’t upload anything new.

While Arduboy was connected to my Mac and turned on, I tried holding down the Up button while turning on the Arduboy. The green LED flashed a few times and the Virus sketch loaded normally.

While Arduboy was connected to my Mac and turned on, I used the point of tweezers to hold in the Reset button while powering up and, while the screen was black, I pressed Command-U to upload. The Virus sketch loaded normally. I saw a mention in a thread that it can take a few seconds for a keypress to register after a reset, and tried it using a few different brief pauses, but it never worked; the green LED flashed a few times and theVirus sketch always loaded normally.

The info I can provide — please do request anything I leave out here — is

• About Arduino shows Arduino 1.6.7.

• In Preferences, Additional Boards Manager URLs:, I have https://arduboy.github.io/board-support/package_arduboy_index.json

• In Sketch, Include Library, no menu item is checked. Arduboy is listed under Contributed libraries, but nothing is checked (and nothing receives a checkmark if I try to select anything) under either Arduino libraries or the one Arduboy item under Contributed libraries. I have sequentially installed versions 0.1.0, 1.0.0, and 1.1.0 and none of them have changed anything I say here to the best of my knowledge. I left 0.1.0 installed most recently.

• Under Tools, Board: “Arduino Leonardo,” that is the selected board. Arduboy and Arduboy Devkit are at the bottom but not selected.

• Under Tools, Port: “dev/cu.usbmodem411 (Arduino Leonardo),” that is the selected port.

• Under Tools, Programmer: “AVRISP mkII,” that is the selected programmer.

• Whenever I open a sketch — say MicroTanks, which I’ve uploaded often, but this is true of every sketch — and press Command-U to upload it, the sketch compiles; Arduino briefly displays information about memory usage in white type; then, in red type, I receive the error message

“avrdude: no programmer has been specified on the command line or the config file.
Specify a programmer using the -c option and try again.”

• The Arduboy then restarts and loads the Virus sketch.

This is everything I can think of to mention; again, if there’s any further info available to me that I can provide, I’m happy to if you tell me how to find it.

Any path back to an updatable Arduboy is greatly appreciated! Thanks.

#2

This is pretty strange, it seems like something having to do with how the IDE is configured.

When you upload, it should not require a programmer. The arduino leonardo platform uses the usb serial connection to upload new code using the sotftware bootloader on the microchip itself.

I believe some other users had some issue that was resolved by completely removing Arduino from their computer and reinstalling it. It’s a bit drastic but with the error you are seeing, that shouldn’t be anything specific to the Arduboy.

Do you have another computer to test the Arduboy on?

#3

You may wish to try updating to the latest Arduino IDE, which is currently 1.6.9

These threads may be of some use:

#4

Thanks, Kevin and Scott. I do have another computer to test on, and I’ll do that first — I’ll also make sure I’ve updated Arduino. Can’t do it now (killing a few moments waiting for a friend) but I’ll report back tonight or tomorrow. And I’ll check out those threads before I get started, Scott.

I appreciate the help!