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Setup issues - USB device present, can't upload firmware with website or IDE

Interface
#1

I’ve just opened up my Kickstarter package after watching the frustrations here and thinking I’d leave it until I had a spare day to work through the issues. Today!

Plugging the SCK into my USB I get a flash of the yellow LED2, then the blue LEDs (3 and 4) start blinking and don’t stop. Nothing from LED1, and nothing from LED2 after the initial flash. The green LED5 is on continuously.

I’ve installed the unsigned plugin to Firefox on Win7x64, it seems to detect the SCK (on the website I hit “start process” and it eventually comes back with the “kickstarter board” selected in the drop-down. I don’t see any LED2 flashing on the board though. If I click “update firmware”, again no LED2 activity , and it just sits there while I go and have a cup of tea… 10 minutes later nothing has changed (I’ve done this several times).

I’ve followed the “setup guide”(http://smartcitizen.me/posts/view/6) so the first thing I did was try to update the firmware using Ardino IDE. I’ve selected “LilyPad Arduino USB” on COM1, and VMWare detected the Lilypad as a USB device (I’m running on the host machine, but I can try Ubuntu in the VM if you think that might help). I only have one MicroUSB cable, but that cable works for connecting to my phone and ebook reader, so it should work with the SCK (just tested it to be sure).

When I try a firmware upload with the Arduino IDE it says:

Binary sketch size: 28,142 bytes (of a 28,672 byte maximum)
Found programmer: Id = "BL{BEL}{STX}"; type = {NUL}
    Software Version = {NUL}.{NUL}; Hardware Version = {NUL}.{NUL}
avrdude: error: buffered memory access not supported. Maybe it isn't
a butterfly/AVR109 but a AVR910 device?

Note that the {NUL} bits are where I’ve replace low ASCII chars with codes manually. There are zero chars in the actual output. I’m reluctant to try the AVR910 suggestion there because I don’t really want to have to dig out another arduino to reflash it with if that causes issues.

The serial monitor in the IDE doesn’t show anything coming back from the SCK, even during the reset cycle when the yellow LED (LED2) flashes.

I’ve just read all the posts I can find here to see if there’s anything useful, but can’t see anything. The only thing I can think of is that maybe my micro-USB socket is partly detached and only letting power through. But that seems unlikely.

Also, the battery supplied doesn’t seem to fit inside the plexiglass covers. Is it supposed to? (I got the solar+battery version of the kickstarter project)

Any suggestions?

#2

Hi there

Ok, it seems many things could happen, lets try to debug it:

  • Use a different cable you know works
  • If you have access to a normal Arduino try to upload into it any sketch
  • Try not to use VM (sometimes screws with the ports)
  • Use Chrome or Safari
  • If you have access to a ICSP, try to burn the bootloader again
  • The battery should fit, you might have to bend the cables a little bit since we had to repair them to match the polarity (battery supplier gave us flipped ones)

Let us know how it goes, be patient, if it doesn’t work we will replace your base board

best

Tomas

#3

a quickl response:

  • the cable I’m using works. Like I said, I tested it with another device.
  • the other Arduinos I have all have USB or mini USB connectors, but I can program them just fine
  • like I said, I used VMWare purely as a tool to show me what USB devices are present. Uninstalling that just to see whether this Arduino is the magic one that won’t work with the VMWare device drivers installed would not work for me.
  • Chrome… I’m reluctant to install a browser that I dislike intensely just to see whether your unsigned plugin works with it. I will try Chromium in Ubuntu on another hard drive and see how I go, hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

Battery… here’s a couple of photos hopefully showing where I get stuck. No matter how I try to arrange it, it always overlaps the posts/screws: http://s4.postimg.org/haw9e535p/merged.jpg There doesn’t seem to be enough vertical space over the uSD/button cell holders, and there’s definitely not enough space to put it next to them. In my photo the sensors are at the bottom, but I doubt it would fit in there either.

#4

Ok, seems you have a bigger issue. Do you think you can check if the code bender plugin is supported by your system? https://codebender.cc/static/plugin

Can you try in a different computer? let us know how it goes with Chromium

As for the battery issue and the laser cut enclosure, it is a design failure. You can make the spacers in the bottom of the board and fit the battery there?

You can also try the 3d printable case: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:236976

cheers

Tomas

#5

Good news - I took the SCK to work and tried a bunch of microUSB cables. None of the long ones worked (over 0.6m, I tried more than 5), but I have a ~0.2m one that seems to work. Although I have to reset the device every few minutes, it seems to lose the connection. So I’ve managed to upload the latest firmware (sck_beta_v0_8_5.ino).

The Sensor Configuration page is also working, so I’ve made progress through that. I’ve changed our wifi to use WEP64 and saved the settings, but I’m still getting “We haven’t yet received data from this device” and “It seems this kit haven’t been configured yet (no macaddress registered)” on the “Sensors” web page.

The website only has three lines for status updates on the “Sensor Configuration” page and there’s no scroll-back, so it’s quite hard to save that text.

When I configure my SCK it starts by saying I have the latest firmware, shows me the wifi key that I put in, but clicking the “register” button just takes me back to “kit haven’t been configured” on the Sensors screen. Also SCK v1.0 rather than v1.1

But at least now the website has this info so hopefully you can see the logs on your end and make some sense of it.

#6

Just tried it again is morning and same problem. After I click “Start process” the 3 line status display briefly says I’ve got the 1.1 SCK and the latest firmware, but by the time I select that that it’s been wiped by the new status lines.

✓ Downloading previous configuration from your kit!
✓ Getting Wi-Fi networks saved on the kit…
✓ Getting time/updates settings saved on the kit…

I click “register” and get “your configuration has been saved”, then get transferred to the “SENSORS” screen (http://smartcitizen.me/devices/view/1020), but it says:

Smart Citizen Kit v1.0
Last Update: No data received yet

We haven’t yet received data from this device
It seems this kit haven’t been configured yet (no macaddress
registered). Please go to the configure page and be sure
to register the mac address of your kit.

My MAC address is: 00:06:66:21:8c:25 but I have not seen that connect to my router. Currently, for example, I have two wired connections (this PC and a VM), one Android wifi connection (my phone), but that’s all. No SCK.

#7

Hi @mozhatesthisshit! You have a SCK v1.1 but your board appears as an Smart Citizen Kit v1.0 on your sensor information page. Are you sure you chose the right board version when configuring the kit!? If this is the case, you should burn the bootloader again. An AVRISP mkII programmer would be really useful to achieve this but you can also use an Arduino UNO as an AVR ISP (in-system programmer): http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP I hope this info helps. Let me know how it goes, plz. Best. :slight_smile:

#8

ok, I’ll make time this weekend. Here’s a sequence of three images stitched together showing what happens right now when I plug my SCK in.
http://s10.postimg.org/w3szqk3hl/SCK_unregisterable.png
(the red lines separate screenshots)

Note that the configure pagedetects it as v1.1 with software 0.8.6, it’s only the display page that gets it wrong.

Should I expect it not to show the wifi “phrase”? That seems sensible but given all the other problems, especially that it hasn’t connected to my wifi, I wonder if it’s lost that?

FWIW, one of the hardware engineers at work played with the SCK and said you’ve probably got the timings slightly wrong on your USB chip, that’s why it’s so sensitive to USB cable length. Initial he said it was a cable quality issue, but even his special “high quality” USB cable didn’t work with it. Apparently that’s a common problem.

#9

I had the same issue two days ago when I tried to register my kit (no data received and v1.0).
I assumed that the browser registration process didn’t work, so i tried the “compilation way” and the kit managed to upload datas.
http://smartcitizen.me/posts/view/11

#10

Hey,

I was having lots of trouble as well. I kept experiencing the ‘error’ where my MAC address was stated as not being uploaded/recognized. I finally tried the manual method. Still no luck. I manually set the API key in arduino terminal - because it wasn’t set. I don’t know if it made a difference, even needs to be done or not but after reflashing using the web interface it seems to have started working. It could have been something else I did…

Anyway by the time I noticed it was working I changed some settings on the web interface and it seems to no longer be connecting/working. The blue LEDs are not turning on at all. There’s a few minutes of data on the server…

It would be really nice if there existed a page with only the sensor info. The map, while nice if you want to look at it slows everything down. It’s not necessary for config and just frustrates you more having to look at a small window with a contextually useless map adjacent.

C-

#11

Hi again,

I repeated the step with connecting to the SCK with arduino, going to $$$ mode and simply resetting the APIKEY. Seems to work find now.
http://smartcitizen.me/devices/view/1077

Will observe and see what happens. Would be nice to have a refresh button on the graph rather than selecting ‘Show last:’ each time.

C-

#12

Hello all,

we are happy to see that finally you are getting the kits to work.

Please do not hesitate to contact us once your kit its been successfully registered, configuration it is done and the kit registration also. We can check internally if your kit is properly registered. When a kit is successfully connected to your WiFi and publishing to our servers but the MAC address does not match the registered one we just discard the information.

As we already mentioned before on the threat it is really important to properly select the kit version during the firmware update process on the Platform configuration tool. If not the bootloader on the kit’s microcontroller just gets corrupted and you will need to reflash it. We can provide instructions about how the process is done using a regular Arduino board. We are trying to see how we can prevent this to happen but since the difference it is on the clock speed but the microcontroller signature is the same it gets more complicated.

Guillem.

#13

@cyrille did you set the apikey for the value of your account or some default value?