In wall light switch node - Custom PCB

[m26872]

@samuel235 I only see two possible causes. Either you changed the fuses unintentionally or you hw-bricked it with supply voltage, ESD or somehing. In the first case you'll just have to connect the external xtal ( likely 8MHz if you burned the standard APM 8MHz fuses).

[Samuel235]

@mfalkvidd - Alrighty :)

Just to let people know, i think that where i went wrong here is the fuses. Even though i burnt my fuses before the bootloader to the correct fuses that i want, I think that i didn't restart Arduino IDE after i saved the boards.txt file. Just make sure you don't do this! Always restart the IDE after altering any info in boards.txt.

[Samuel235]

@m26872 - Well to be honest, the way that i was throwing around possible solutions i'm guessing that its just a silly mistake with fuses in the boards.txt file. But would this just not burn the bootloader, i wouldn't have incorrectly burnt the fuses, i took 100% care over that, i came back here to double/triple check the fuses that i wanted from a previous comment i made. I burnt those and i changed the boards.txt and didn't restart the arduino IDE i dont think. But wouldn't this just not burn the bootloader?

Maybe if that is correct of me thinking this, then i could have bricked it with power/esd like you mentioned. Either way i have ordered some crystals to troubleshoot this.

[Samuel235]

The Arduino Pro Minis and another FTDI adapter has arrived today along with my crystals. We have news...

• Firstly, I got the fuses and bootloaders back to the correct ones (E2 DA 06) and the arduino bootloader, no issues here.
  I then tried the new FTDI adapter - Still nothing.
• Then it was the turn of trying an arduino pro mini with FTDI. Nothing there either. So i started to get puzzled at this point...
• I turn my mac on, tried it on there. I installed the drivers and allowed them to be used by running 'csrutil enable --without kext' in a terminal inside of recovery mode. Logged in, it recognized the FTDI chip, but couldn't upload to the APM. It is throwing out the same error of "avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 10 of 10: not in sync: resp=0xee"

I'm yet to start googling the error code, that will be my next step to take. Its very much looking like the adapter is not able to chat to the board and since its happening on both boards i'm thinking that i may be doing something silly.

[Samuel235]

The arduino nano that i have uses the same serial chip that the FTDI adapter does, CH340G. Please correct me if i'm wrong in saying this, if i had a broken/incorrect driver for that CH340G then i wouldn't be able to upload via USB to my arduino nano?

[mfalkvidd]

Ch340g is not able to auto-reset the Arduino. You need to press reset manually, just after the Arduino IDE prints "Uploading". Maybe that's the problem? More information is available at http://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/how-do-i-program-arduino-pro-mini-ch340g-usb

[Samuel235]

@mfalkvidd - I was attempting this last night. I spent 20 minutes doing this, i will attempt again tonight to see if i was doing it at the correct time.

[Samuel235]

That article is regarding the CH340's that do not have the DTR pin, however mine does. Either way i have just spend another 10 minutes trying to get it to load a sketch to two APM's and nothing, I've tried pressing the reset on the adapter and the arduino when it prints "uploading..." and i've also tried holding the reset down and releasing it when it prints the updating... message too. Nothing still :(

[Samuel235]

So with a few wiring alterations of connecting the adapter's pin GND to the GND of the APM, rather than the CTS on the adapter to the GND of the APM it works. However, it won't work going to my board, it gives me 'avrdude: error reading signature data for part "ATmega328P", rc=-3' and if i switch the gnd and the cts around on my board (which on my board design is connected together) it can't even connect to the device. I will be troubleshooting this tonight and tomorrow now. At least we're slightly further forward!

[Samuel235]

Just a quick mini update:

I'm still having issues after several days of FTDI troubleshooting. I think I can safely assume there is an issue with my FTDI section, on my board itself. I have uploaded a binaryswitch sketch to the uC with the ISP 'upload through programmer' option, uploaded perfect like normal. I then plugged the board in with my FTDI serial adapter, i couldn't monitor the serial port, nothing in the monitor. I had enabled the debug too. So, the basic things i have done at the moment are:

• Switching the gnd and cts pins to find a combination that works, nothing.
• Switch Rx and Tx around, nothing.

Once i get home from work today i will be troubleshooting to see if there are any other things that i should have included into my FTDI section that maybe i didn't do. If anyone has any input on this section, I would love to hear it.

[jeylites]

@samuel235

Nice work so far. I had a similar idea to use Binary Switch to turn ON/OFF my relays and lights but I had to discard the idea after going through several issues. Occasionally my serial gateway would fail to connect to the Vera and it would paralyze all my lightings. Essentially the Binary switches talk's to the Relays by going through the gateway. So decided to redesign the electronics to accommodate Relay with Button Actuator Sketch. If you lose the gateway, you could still bet that it would work though I wouldn't say it's 100% reliable but it gets the job done. Lately, I'm also exploring other avenues to somehow use www.Souliss.net concepts on MySensor and I was informed that My sensor Ver 2.0 Beta has got something similar by using ESP8266. I don't know how much of this is true but I'm pretty sure @hek will be able to explain.

[Samuel235]

@jeylites - I'm well aware about it crashing and just stopping all of my system from working. I'm just going to see how it functions when its the only solution to turn my lights on to be honest.

The only thing that i can notice on my schematic/board design is that the capacitor on my DTR line is right next to the uC, not close to the FTDI header at all. Would you guys have it close to the uC or the FTDI header? I'm sure I was advised to have it close to the uC.

[m26872]

@samuel235 Just because ISP upload and everything else works, I would still try to rule out hw/assembling issue. What measures have you taken apart from inspection? Do you have more than one board built? Resoldered the uC? Programmed same fuses/bootloader to APM?

Also, I didn't get the CTS thing. Did you just need to disconnect CTS to make it work on APM? Isn't CTS shorted to GND on your APM as well?

[Samuel235]

@m26872

Do you have more than one board built?

This is the second one of this Revision, the first had the same issue, but there was no difference between the two boards, just did this to lower the chances of any soldering problems causing issues.

Resoldered the uC?

I have gone around the uC with the soldering iron 'tinned' to make sure each of the pins are connected to its pads properly without too much solder there, I might go around once more just incase i didn't get enough solder to connect on some of the pins. However, i don't believe this to be an issue, but anything is possible ;)

Programmed same fuses/bootloader to APM?

I have programmed the APM to match this board, and it worked fine, fuses and bootloader included.

Also, I didn't get the CTS thing. Did you just need to disconnect CTS to make it work on APM? Isn't CTS shorted to GND on your APM as well?

Both of the boards have CTS shorted to GND. I didn't explain it correctly, i meant that if i use GND (on the USB adapter) -> GND on board, nothing happens. But if i do CTS (on the USB adapter) -> GND or CTS on board, it works for the APM.

Now i have some progress. I made the fundamental error of not powering the board with the battery while it was connect to FTDI. I can now monitor the serial output and see my debugging messages. However, i still can't upload a sketch. To me this all points down to the DTR circuit. The ISP uses the RESET line rather than DTR, and the ISP is working fine (from what i can tell). Would you agree with me in thinking that the issue is somewhere on the RESET section/line? My initial thought was my fuses, but my E2 DA 06 settings allows boot reset vector so therefor i don't think that my fuses are to blame.

[Samuel235]

Arduino IDE has just uploaded a sketch perfectly fine with no errors to my board, for some reason. Just out of the blue (I did nothing different to what i've been doing the last week). However, i then tried it again and got errors. So just out of curiousity i uploaded the BareMinimum sketch, and got errors. I opened the Serial monitor and got nothing printed. So therefor i know that something has happened to the uC because it was running my switch sketch (through 'upload via programmer'). So i then uploaded my switch sketch and got errors again about the programmer not being in sync:

avrdude: stk500_paged_load(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x10, resp=0x81
avrdude: stk500_cmd(): programmer is out of sync

I then opened the serial monitor, the sketch is uploaded!

Why am i getting errors? From my limited knowledge, my two thoughts are:

• The board is not reseting after the sketch has been uploaded and therefor the programmer is out of sync to the board.
• The programmer is running/uploading too quickly for the uC to know or keep in time with.

[m26872]

@samuel235 said:

Both of the boards have CTS shorted to GND. I didn't explain it correctly, i meant that if i use GND (on the USB adapter) -> GND on board, nothing happens. But if i do CTS (on the USB adapter) -> GND or CTS on board, it works for the APM.

Sorry, I still don't get it. Don't you always connect all 6 pins?

Now i have some progress. I made the fundamental error of not powering the board with the battery while it was connect to FTDI.

Great, but you should not need a battery if you have power from the FTDI-adapter and don't have any big power consumers or shorts on the board. Do you use 5 or 3.3V ? Have you measured the current (e.g. from a battery)?

[Samuel235]

@m26872 - Both of the adapters that i purchased only came with 5 wires in a ribbon cable fashion, and me being mr gullible decided to assume that it only needed the 5. I just assumed that i only need to connect GND OR CTS. I'm now assuming that i need to connect both of them as they don't short together on the adapter itself? I have watched numerous videos on FTDI and ISP to troubleshoot this and I can honestly admit that i didn't realise if any of them had used 6 connections :(

I did at one point test the current, i can't remember exactly what it was. Give me an hour and I will be able to test that :) - I'm using 3.3v for the VCC line, my adapter is set to 3.3v too. Does it matter what the current is or would you be checking to just see if there is any current at all? I have tested the voltages when i'm hooked up to the serial connection just to let you know, and they were fine across all of the vcc connections on the board, so there is no connections missing and the uC is definably receiving power :)

[Samuel235]

So i have just dropped my multimeter over the coin cell and various other positions on the board, it would seem that there isn't much of a current change anywhere across the board. It reads 2.6mA across the board. This shows that there isn't really any current draw across the board and therefor like @m26872 mentioned in the previous post, there is no reason to why it shouldn't work being powered from the serial adapter.

When i have the board connected through the serial adapter without the battery, the current is the same across the board, the reset pin is receiving the 3v to keep it high and i get an error of:

avrdude: stk500_getparm(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0xfc

avrdude: stk500_getparm(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0xfc

avrdude: arduino_read_sig_bytes(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x10, resp=0xfc
avrdude: error reading signature data for part "ATmega328P", rc=-3
Problem uploading to board.  See http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Troubleshooting#upload for suggestions.
avrdude: error reading signature data, rc=-1

I don't think there errors are very helpful as they keep changing every time i try to upload it without touching the board. I think its just having general issues with getting a transmit signal. I can still view the serial monitor perfectly fine which to me indicates that i have the Rx and the Tx line correct for a start. Am I correct in assuming this?

What is your general thoughts, would you think it has anything to do with the reset procedure or do you feel there is an issue elsewhere on the board/power?

EDIT: I measured the current incorrectly, changed the figure in this post to reflect the correct measurement.

[Samuel235]

I can also confirm that my RESET pin is high with the same voltage as the coin cell is providing so there is no issue from the start of the process, the only thing I'm wondering is if the DTR pin is pulling the pin low when needed. This process would be much easier to see if i had an oscilloscope.

[Samuel235]

I can now rule out my previous thoughts of the capacitor on the DTR line being too far away from the FTDI connector, i just moved its placement and it doesn't change a thing. Still getting the protocol error.