LilyPad ProtoSnap Plus Kit

Kits
1

LilyPad ProtoSnap Plus Kit

I have two issues

  1. The board seems to have bricked. It was flashing green LED as that’s

what I programmed, but it no longer flashes. I plugged it in via USB and

there’s a quick red blink on the CHG LED, but nothing happens after that.

Please advise.

  1. The link to the Board Manager for the ProtoSnap Plus is not accessible

in my school’s Internet. I had to use my own Internet for this to be

installed properly. Is there a workaround to this? Our school board seems

to have blocked github sites and the json is therefore not accessible.

Please advise.

2

Hello John, and thanks for posting!

  1. The board seems to have bricked. It was flashing green LED as that’s

what I programmed, but it no longer flashes.

This can happen if you upload code to the board with the wrong board definition. Fortunately, you can recover from it, but the process can be a bit tricky until you figure out the timing. The steps below will walk you thought the recovery process. Just make sure you have "LilyPad USB Plus" from Arduino's "Board" menu and this shouldn't happen again.

Recovering a board that lost it’s COM port when you upload code with the wrong board definitions:

  • - Press the RESET twice quickly and you should see a blue LED fading in and out for about 8 seconds.

  • - Quickly, go to /Tools/Port and select the port labeled ‘LilyPad USB Plus.’ If it’s not there, get out of /Tools/Port, retry step 1 and then retry this step. You don’t have much time between pressing the button twice and selecting the port, so it may take a few tries to get this to work.

  • - Once you have that com port selected, make sure you have the Arduino IDE set to a board type of ‘LilyPad USB Plus.’

  • - Open up the ‘Blink’ example from /File/Examples/01.Basics/Blink.

  • - Click the ‘upload’ button in Arduino.

  • - Once you see ‘Uploading…’ appear in the status bar in Arduino, quickly double press RESET again. The ‘Blink’ sketch should upload and you will see a blinking green LED on the board. If that happens, the board is now recovered and ready to go.

  • - If it doesn’t work, try step 6 again. The timing can be tricky to get this step to work and it may take a few tries to get the code to upload, but once it does, you’re in the clear.


    1. The link to the Board Manager for the ProtoSnap Plus is not accessible

    in my school’s Internet. I had to use my own Internet for this to be

    installed properly. Is there a workaround to this?

    This is a bit trickier.

    You’re either going to need to get your IT department to unblock the internet sites the JSON file is trying to access or temporarily connect your computers to a different internet source like a smart phone. There is an option in the Arduino IDE under Preference/Network/ to configure a manual proxy that might get around your IT department’s block but I’ve not ever tried using that and don’t have any experience doing this. Your IT department might also be able to help with that setup if they have a proxy server they’d be willing to allow you to use or if you know of one you could use.

    3

    I’m currently getting the message on Arduino: Error downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spark … index.json Please advise.

    Thanks.

    4

    Additionally, when I try to pull from : https://github.com/sparkfun/Arduino_Boa … index.json

    It gives me this error

    Skipping contributed index file C:\Users\123\AppData\Local\Arduino15\package_sparkfun_index.json, parsing error occured:

    com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParseException: Unexpected character (‘<’ (code 60)): expected a valid value (number, String, array, object, ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘null’)

    at [Source: (FileInputStream); line: 7, column: 2]

    Skipping contributed index file C:\Users\123\AppData\Local\Arduino15\package_sparkfun_index.json, parsing error occured:

    com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParseException: Unexpected character (‘<’ (code 60)): expected a valid value (number, String, array, object, ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘null’)

    at [Source: (FileInputStream); line: 7, column: 2]

    5

    You’re using the wrong board manager URL. Please see the [hookup guide for the correct URL.](LilyPad ProtoSnap Plus Hookup Guide - SparkFun Learn)

    6

    I tried the URL in the hookup guide. It gives me an error as follows:

    Error downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spark … index.json

    Skipping contributed index file C:\Users\123\AppData\Local\Arduino15\package_sparkfun_index.json, parsing error occured:

    com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParseException: Unexpected character (‘<’ (code 60)): expected a valid value (number, String, array, object, ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘null’)

    at [Source: (FileInputStream); line: 7, column: 2]

    Skipping contributed index file C:\Users\123\AppData\Local\Arduino15\package_sparkfun_index.json, parsing error occured:

    com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParseException: Unexpected character (‘<’ (code 60)): expected a valid value (number, String, array, object, ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘null’)

    at [Source: (FileInputStream); line: 7, column: 2]

    7

    I’ve tried on two different computers here and it’s working fine for us.

    There’s either something wrong with your Arduino installation or your network connection. You might try removing Arduino from your computer and reinstalling. If that doesn’t fix the issue, something is going on with your network connection to the internet.