Trying to set up the Digital Sandbox - Win 10
Spent around two frustrating hours trying to get the DS to hookup to my PC - not impressed -instructions confusing and contradictory at times - already have the Arduino IDE installed and working - but installed the drivers you suggested - I can see a UNO and Pro Mini in the device manager - this morning was able to see changes in the device manager - so maybe a restart of my PC was required - don’t remember seeing restart -
when I upload to Arduino - no messages in the Ardublock thing but a pile of java errors in the IDE - but no way to copy the errors -
I am not impressed at this point - the target is for a 13 year old - so spending useless hours not getting this to work is so far a waste of my time and money - maybe I should have saved the money and got an Arduino kit??
So how do I get this to work?
Thanks
Hi saildude.
What version of the IDE are you using? Ardublock is fairly old software at this point and only works with IDE versions 1.6.11 and lower. (Not sure how low, but I’ve tested from 1.6.8 through 1.6.12)
For drivers, you should only need the FTDI driver and that can be downloaded from the FTDI website [here. (For windows, get the [setup executable.)
The Digital Sandbox won’t show up as an Uno in device manager, but should show up as a COM port when plugged in. Try opening device manager and expanding the ‘Ports’ section and plugging and unplugging the board. Whatever COM port appears and disappears is the port number you want to use in Arduino.
In Arduino, you want to select ‘SparkFun Digital Sandbox’ as your board type.](https://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM21228_Setup.zip)](https://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm)
The IDE is 1.8.10
So do I need to uninstall things and reinstall an older version - my guess is there is a reason the IDE was upgraded. Or should I buy a different computer just for the old software? Seems a bit much
I can see something showing up in device manager when I plug the board in, I also did pick Digital Sandbox as the processor. But when I tried to download directly from the IDE things did not go well at all.
Thanks
Still sucks and does not run - got a 2nd laptop for this as I did not want to mess up my regular laptop with a 3 year old version of the IDE - did the download and unziped - copied the directory to the Program files directory - had to install the TFDI or what ever drivers - can see when the board is plugged and unplugged into the USB port.
No icon on the desktop nor any instructions on how to get one - but I did go down into Program files and clicked on the Arduino application - sort of started to open then crashed and closed -
Could not seem also to get the board to run on the standard current IDE nor could I find any instructions for using it with the current IDE -
Yet another hour wasted - not impressed at this point - any other ideas???
Thanks
You don’t need a whole different computer to run an older version of the IDE. Just grab the .ZIP version of [Ardino 1.6.11 and unzip that to wherever is convenient for you and run the arduino.exe file after unzipping.
Both 1.6.11 and whatever version you have now can live peacefully together on the same machine but a lot has changed with the IDE between 1.6.11 and 1.8.10 so you may see some library errors pop up when starting 1.6.11. Those errors (if they pop up at all) can be safely ignored as you’re not going to be using those libraries with 1.6.11 anyway.](https://www.arduino.cc/download_handler.php?f=/arduino-1.6.11-windows.zip)
I pitched the Digital Sandbox - just too much of a hassle -nice idea but poor execution - same with your SIK Board that would not talk to a plain IDE without a bunch of hassles
I got a nice kit from the Arduino folks - also comes with a 170 page printed manual - no hassling with poorly formatted web pages and trying to print them out
PS - my nephew’s kids school did not go with your kits - too big a hassle and they are quite happy with the Arduino folks learning kits