Loading optiboot to a redboard

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi!

I am very new with all of this arduino stuff and I need some help. I have recently purchased the sparkfun inventors kit as an introduction to arduino and circuit building. I have made the circuits all the way up to about the 6th one. Every thing worked fine up until a few days ago. My boards green “on” light turns on when I plug it into the computer. But when I try to upload a sketch nothing happens on the board and I get an “avrdud: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding” error message on my Mac. Also, when I hit the reset button on the board nothing happens anymore (the LEDs don’t blink like they used to).

After searching the web for answers I have come to the conclusion that I need to reinstall the boot loader onto the board. Unfortunately I can not find how to do it on the redboard included with the kit.

Any help on how to do it, or if it would be more worth while to just buy a new one is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

2

Hello,

This is a pretty common error. It can be caused by

  • a bad USB cable or port

  • having the wrong board definition selected. The RedBoard needs to use the “Arduino Uno” board definition.

  • having the wrong COM port selected

  • weak connections or solder joints

  • a corrupted bootloader

To reinstall the bootloader, follow this guide [https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/in … loader/all]

If you have any further questions, feel free to email techsupport(AT)sparkfun.com