Pro Micro cannot connect to Arduino IDE

Hi. I’m trying to get a Pro Micro up and running. I’ve done the usual setup stuff. In the Arduino IDE, my settings are:

Board: “SparkFun Pro Micro”

Processor: ATmega32U4 (5V, 16MHz)

Port: [blank].

Even though the board is connected via USB cable and the power light glows on the board, the list of ports to choose from is empty.

This is on my MacBook Pro. On my Lenovo PC, the results are similar. In the Arduino IDE, the list of available ports is empty. One difference is that when I plug the board in, I get this message:

USB device not recognized

The last USB device you connected to this computer malfunctioned, and windows does not recognize it.

Both these computers have had not trouble programming Unos, Megas, and RedBoards.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Hi William.

Were you ever able to see the board on your computer and send code to it? From the symptoms you’re describing, it sounds like you may have uploaded code to the Pro Micro with the wrong board definitions in Arduino.

If you set the IDE for 5V, 16MHz and then upload code to the 3V, 8MHz board (or vice versa) these are the results you would get.

It’s recoverable, but can be tricky to get it right and may take a few tries to recover the board but the troubleshooting section of our hookup guide will walk you through the recovery process. The link below will take you to that.

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/pr … ng-and-faq

Thanks for the quick reply. My third attempt at “de-bricking” seems to have done the trick. Finicky little monster. Now I can start coding. Yeah!

Thanks,

Bill