Teaching Rambo how to print

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I could not resist the temptation and I bought a discounted RAMBo board a while ago. Today each
attempt to upload some code ended up in a list of messages like the ones below:

avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_getsync(): timeout communicating with programmer

 First idea was that the board might not contain a bootloader, but after using my recently acquired ICSP programmer and obtaining a dump of the ATMega 2560 from the board I could see it was exactly the same as the one from a regular Arduino Mega board. 

 As it is a new board, there is a chance of being a DOA. But I was surprised that no LED was lit when I connected the USB port. However, I could see one of the LEDs from the serial port (I guessed this is what they were) blinking when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to upload a sketch to the board.

I realize that while I dumped the flash memory of the Mega, more LEDs were lit. It then hit me that maybe the only problem was that the board (the version I am using has no supply source selection) was not working because it was not being properly powered. So I connected a 12v power supply to the proper input and I was able to upload code to the board flawlessly. I should have tried this in the first place.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This helped me tremendously. I also didn't realize that the board was not getting enough power because the self-tapping cable that was included didn't tap the wire.
4:32 am
misan said…
Glad that it helped!
12:46 pm
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