I just received my SAMD21 mini breakout board that I purchased via Digikey and I have a problem with it.
When I connect the board to my USB port, the red power led lights immediately and the blue led starts to blink with a ~1sec interval.
When I double-press the reset, the blue led changes into a ‘heartbeat’ fading in and out mode.
Both of these observations lead me to conclude that the microcontroller is correctly powered and the bootloader is running.
But on the PC (I have tried both windows and linux) no usb-connection appears. In linux, the output of the lsusb-command is the same before and after I connect the board. I also tried multiple usb cables to rule a bad cable out.
Does anyone have an idea what could be going on ? I inspected the board under a magnifier but could not detect any bad or weak solderings.
There may be a driver issue going on since you’re getting activity from the SAMD Mini when plugging it in and forcing it into bootloader mode. What version of Windows did you test the board on? If you open the Device Manager, does anything show up in the menus as an “Unrecognized USB Device” or something similar? If you have not done so already, try manually installing the drivers from the [Hookup Guide.](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/samd21-minidev-breakout-hookup-guide/drivers-if-you-need-them)
The windows machine I used is a win10 installation. According the hookup guide it is not needed to install drivers manually.
No extra USB device is showing up in the device manager when I plug in the board and I force a rescan. So it almost looks like the usb is the board is completely dead. Which is a bit weird since it is a direct connection from usb-connector to the atmel chip which is clearly alive when looking at the LED’s.
Well, that is just strange, especially since it sounds like the board has a bootloader on it since you can force it into that mode. My guess is D+ or D- on the micro USB connector are bridged or floating or something further down the line from them is causing the problem. Can you take a few photos of your board and attach it to your response? Also, try closely inspecting the pins on the USB connector and let me know if you notice any solder bridges/jumpers on those pins or if any of them appear to be floating. Getting a photo of that is going to be really tricky but if you can, that would be helpful too.
Thanks for that photo and inspecting the board further. I’m glad it’s not a hardware error missed by our Quality Control tests and inspections but something funky is going on with the USB controller inside the SAMD21. I think at this point it’s safe to just call the board defective since the issue persists through multiple computers and cables and nothing on the board looks damaged. Since you purchased the board from Digi-Key, you will need to contact them directly to proceed with this issue. We cannot process returns/replacements for our distributors. If necessary, please feel free to refer to this thread.
I have the same problem with the mini breakout. I also have a couple of ProMicro boards that also don’t work anymore. The problem is the driver. I was able to load code to the board after installing the windows 7 driver, however, it stopped working after so many errors on the usb port . Windows now reports that usb driver has failed and you cannot get around this. I suspect that there is a counter that overflows and forces a permanent error on that usb port. I worked with Microsoft, but all they did was to reload windows 10. I cannot even load the drivers manually now.
I now have four boards that don’t work. I have read your instructions and troubleshooting. Note: I was able to load the boards at some times. I noticed that the ProMicro boards stopped working after an update from Microsoft. They changed their driver about seven months ago. Also, the Hookup Guide doesn’t seem to have the correct information to load drivers for Windows 10. I was hoping you would have a driver for these boards. What do I do with these boards.
Change in symptoms: I reloaded windows 10 yesterday. I reloaded the driver Sparkfun supplied. I now can load the SAMD21 board, however, after a couple of tries, the “port” in the tools menu gets un-highlighted and during each upload I get errors saying it could not find a port available, however the board gets loaded (with double reset). I cannot use the serial monitor because there is no port available. When I look at devices(in windows), the usb port says it has an error. The blink programs works, but it appears when using SerialUSB the port gets an error and windows flags the port as failed. I will do some more testing later and update this post.
I can’t reproduce the port being un-highlighted. Now everything appears to be working. I am double clicking the switch and it is going into bootloader mode and I upload a program . Sometimes I get errors that say that no port is available. I re-upload and it works. I check the tools menu and use the serial monitor OK. I don’t know why the change, but I will try to use it as is. I will update this post later, after I write my code and test my program.
Loaded some code to the mini board, code loaded ok, but I could not use Serial Monitor because the port was un-highlighted again. Devices show usb port failed. Restarted Windows but same problem. I cannot get port back in the tools menu even though the board loads each time I reset the mini. Windows is holding the error after a certain number of errors on the serial ports.
I had the same problem and this is what I did. As soon as I plugged in the usb I double tapped reset and then the bootloader showed up. Then it was recognized on the port
