After connecting to the XRP via USB on either my Windows PC or Mac I am unable to connect to it. As instructed I have pressed the “reset” and “bootsel” buttons as instructed but either OS does not recognize the XRP. I have tried 3 difference cables and rebooted many times but still I’m unable to connect the XRP to my laptops. Please help. Thanks
PS: the pico led flashes green and the 2 red power led are on.
Hi there, sorry to hear you’re having trouble!
In my experience, this kind of behavior typically happens with USB cables that are “power only” (the data wires are omitted to save a few pennies). Given that you’ve tried 3 cables, that’s unlikely, but would still be good to confirm. Do those USB cables work with other devices to connect and send data? If not, then you’ve probably got 3 “power only” USB cables. If the cables do send data on other devices, then your cables are probably fine.
Do you have batteries installed in your XRP? If so, could you try temporarily removing them, or unplugging the barrel connector? The control board should get powered over USB, so just want to confirm that works.
It should work on any operating system without special driver downloads, because the board will show up as a serial port in normal operation, or as a USB mass storage device when running the bootloader. Modern operating systems have drivers built-in for both.
Given that the green LED flashes, that rules out some other possible problems (eg. power shorts, faulty RP2040, etc.). Hard to say what the problem could be if the above suggestions don’t reveal anything.
You also might check to ensure the full 5v is being delivered (if you have a multimeter you can test the cable’s power pins, and as mentioned above also ensure there are also 2 data pins at both ends…I’ve seen some funky stuff lol)
Thanks for your help. Indeed the issue turned out to be I was using USB cables that were missing the data channel.
Excellent!