Sparkfun Thing Plus NINA B306 bricked by "blink" sketch

Development Boards MicroMod
1

Hi, I just got the new Thing Plus, with the B306 Bluetooth and all the nice sensors on board. I uploaded a BME280test sketch, which didn’t seem to work, so I loaded the most-basic blink sketch from the standard Arduino examples.

This seemed to work. The onboard blue LED started flashing.

But… It now won’t connect by USB. Windows doesn’t give the USB-connect noise when it’s plugged in. Hitting “Reset” or holding “Reset” for 20 seconds doesn’t bring it back to USB connectivity. I tried two different USB cables on two different computers. No friendly USB noise when plugging it in.

Is there a button-push combination that will restore the USB connection so I can reprogram it with something else? I’m using Arduino 2.0.4, if that makes a difference.

2

There are several libraries that need to be used https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/sp … ware-setup - make sure to grab those and give it another try?

You can also try pulling the RST pin LOW to try and reset

3

Thanks. I have the libraries. At least all of the ones that seem relevant to what I want to do. (The hookup guide is silent on the WS2812 LED onboard, for example.)

Reset does nothing for this board, except obviously restart the blink sketch that’s running.

4

I searched for advice on the M4 processor. I found an Adafruit page which says that double-clicking Reset will restart the bootloader.

Yes, it does something when I double-click. The onboard LED starts flashing at a higher rate. But it doesn’t connect to USB so there’s still no chance of uploading a new sketch onto it.

5

Try following the instructions exactly, getting the board package and all 5 libraries, and try the BLE datapipe example given

Also try to using the RST pin pulled to GND as mentioned…any change?

6

Well, I’ve finally worked it out. If the unit is plugged in and then immediately you double-click the reset button, then it connects to the USB and can be reprogrammed.

It seems like the full reset capability is locked out after a certain amount of time connected to power.

I’ve asked Sparkfun customer support to add this information to the hookup guide, via email.