Greetings,
I’m having problems connecting the FTDI Basic board to Qwiic OpenLog to allow me to reprogram the OpenLog.
- Windows 11 PC
- It works, maybe 5% of the time. Seems more likely to work when I’ve left it disconnected overnight. Windows PC not rebooted.
- When it doesn’t work, the Windows Com device isn’t created.
- If I disconnect the OpenLog from the FTDI Basic the Com device will connect.
- Reconnecting just 3.3v and ground between the FTDI Basic and OpenLog causes the Com device to dissappear.
- When things are not working both the receive and transmit LEDs are lit on the FTDI Basic. This behavior is true whether only power is connected or all 6 interconnections are present.
- I have 2 of each board and have tried all combinations and have the same behavior
- Given the behavior occurs with only power connected I thought the OpenLog might be presenting two much current draw for the FTDI Basic. I tried using seperate power and the Com port remains but the data connection fails with Sync errors.
I’d appreciate any suggestions as to how to approach solving this problem.
Ted
Please post one or more photos of the setup, in particular a closeup showing the solder connections to the FTDI connector header pins on the OpenLog.
Here are a couple of images. This was the first board and I just soldered on a piece of CAT6.
Note that the first time I plugged in the USB cable, this morning, I was able to connect the IDE to the board and download an update. After testing I unplugged the USB, waited a few seconds and plugged it back in. From that point on I’m unable to connect with the FTDI showing both transmit and receive LEDs lit even after unplugging all but power between the boards.
Sorry about the ugly solder connections. I’ve been trying various things for the last couple of weeks.
Here’s the other end of the wires with the connection to the FTDI board through a protoboard.
One or more bad connections to the programming port is pretty clearly the problem.
The best way to proceed is to cleanly solder a six-pin male header to the FTDI vias on the Qwiic OpenLog board, and plug in the programming FTDI adapter directly, as intended. Sparkfun and Adafruit have excellent soldering tutorials.
e.g. six pin chunk broken off from this 14x1 header:
1 Like
That made sense to me and I had done just that with the second board I acquired late last week. I was seeing the same problem. Since I was out of ideas I decided to unsolder the cable that I showed in the picture and replace it with a header, as recommended. Once connected I was able to communicate (reprogram and see output) with the board for a couple of iterations and then it failed. By failed I mean that the transmit and receive LEDs are lit on the FTDI board and the COM port is not enumerated by windows.
It feels very much like I am loading the 3.3v down from the FTDI. I connected the power wires from the I2C connector on the Openlog to the 3.3v and ground on another Arduino and I’m now able to program and test with that board for the last hour.
The new Openlog I acquired already had the connector, as mentioned, but I am not able to program it. The COM port is enumerated but I either get the avrDude errors or it just hangs when trying to download. The Openlog has power LED but the green status LED turns on sometimes with or without the Power LED. It doesn’t matter whether it has power via the I2C or not. The board is reset at the beginning of the download attempt as the power LED does turn off but no serial data is transferred.
It is possible that a wiring problem or solder bridge damaged the FTDI adapter. Please post a picture showing the soldering on the header pins.
It is a good idea to use a multimeter (set to continuity check) to test for possibly intermittent short circuits on the connectors.
If it’s an option for you it might be worth recruiting a buddy to re-solder those…or stopping by a cell phone/electronics repair shop (or similar) for the same
