too bad since the reader we are discussing here is the only Qwiic RFID reader from Sparkfun.
Sparkfun offers the M7E Hecto, but that one is 10 times the price ($300) and has no Qwiic, so no option at least for me.
Then there is the Sparkfun USB-C Reader, price is OK, no Qwiic but pin breakouts, only problem is I do not know if it can be used without USB-C (hookup guide is not clear about that) and I cannot see how to connect that one to the Micromod Single mainboard as I already must use RX/TX for the BNO086 IMU RST/INT signals.
I could not find an Adafruit Stemma/Qwiic compatible alternative; Adafruit offers a Stemma/Qwiic compatible RFID tag, but no reader.
It would be great if Sparkfun replies to this topic as it clearly shows that the product is broken as it is sold/in stock with resellers at the moment.Are there are any solutions or plans about the issue @TS-Russell ? Anyone internally where you could forward that issue to?
@happy_kass I forgot to mention that another user has reported the problem already earlier and did flash the firmware.
Here are some images on how to do it. Maybe we can figure this out:
hey @michaelheiml82 thank you for the communication. I went through the thread and somehow he has managed to clear tags before 20 reads. I wonder if that solves our issue as well. I will try to update my arduino code and try to clear tags every 5 reads or so and see if that works. If not, I can work on the flashing method this evening. I have also realized that our choice in products is limited. I will update you tonight on what I learn. Although the image is not clear about one of the soldering joints (the one above the I2C jumpers)
I think the way he has managed that is by a hard reset of the whole reader after like 10 reads.. I will check if I can somehow wire the reset signal from the micro mod board to the reader to do the same. (If it’s even possible to trigger the reset signal on the micro mod single board).
I did not find a software solution to trigger a reset for the reader..maybe there is one?
@michaelheiml82 I had everything soldered and ready to flash the updated firmare but could not find a 10 uF capacitor in lab. I can borrow some from the workshop tomorrow and see if I am successful. I will update you on my progress. Hopefully, our best bet is to ask Sparkfun to update the firmware on newly produced boards and buy them.
I just checked my arduino sketch. What I did was to leave the firmware on the reader as is and toggle the reset pin on the reader after every 10 tags read.
I changed the firmware in the reader using the method mentioned in this thread. I experimented with changing the maximum reads to 1, but I’m not sure if that worked (seeing what was changed in the firmware on the github, I doubt it would have, so that’s probably why I decided to go the hard reset route).
I’m sure writing the firmware to the AtTiny in this way works, because I actually changed the AtTiny on two of my readers for new ones (I think I somehow bricked them) and flashed them with the “old” firmware and they worked after that.
Connecting the reader to the arduino for programming the AtTiny is easiest if you first solder some pin headers to it. All but one of the pins necessary are connected straight to those pins. The only one missing is the MISO pin I believe. That one can be accessed through one of the programming pads by soldering a wire directly to it.
Just be really careful following the tutorial on flashing the AtTiny using an arduino. You first upload the “programming sketch” to the Arduino and then flash the AtTiny through the arduino straight from the arduino IDE, but you use “upload using programmer” (under the tools tab), instead of using the upload button.
I wonder how many of these boards that don’t work properly (and can only be fixed by rewriting the firmware and uploading it straight to the chip, both things a lot of user won’t want or are able to do) Sparkfun has sold. Things have gone pretty quiet from their side since I posted here.
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I am not up to date on sparkfun hardware or software so I will not be of help with this.
@edspark thank you for the reply
@micropuller Thanks for the info. I am currently flashing the ATtiny and I get the following error when I burn bootloader avrdude: Yikes! Invalid device signature.
Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
this check.
Failed chip erase: uploading error: exit status 1
May I please know how you went past it?
You do not need to burn the bootloader, just the program.
I had the same problem, but I’m not sure if this caused the bricking of the AtTiny. I checked my notes and found this: https://forum.arduino.cc/t/burnt-wrong-bootloader-oops-attiny84/857875
Here’s another tutorial I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXXdoeu7yWw
Sorry that I’m not able to be more specific. I was in a hurry to get things running and it’s been quite some time, so I’m not 100% sure how I finally got things to work.