I just got my dev kit today. When I first attached it, it lit up, but it went dark in the time I took to look up and upload the colorwheel example. Arduino says the tutorial uploaded, but my dev blink did not light up even when I pressed the button and none of the blinks I linked to it appeared to learn anything. I also tried the buttonpress example with the same non-result.
Am I doing something wrong or is my dev kit broken?
Hi @Anaya,
Welcome and thanks for sharing! Can you take a quick photo of the setup so we can make sure your Dev Blink is hooked up correctly? I have a couple of guesses, but it is first helpful to see the Blink hooked up via USB and then secondly, helpful to see a screenshot of the completed upload from Arduino. It will say “Done uploading”
Can’t wait to get you up and running!
all my best,
Jonathan
honestly a little surprised, always exciting to see something for the first time, and this is a first. Good thing is, we don’t stop til we get it workin’ for ya 
Hmmm, it is definitely uploading to the dev blinks so all your connections are good. Looks like you are doing everything right.
So maybe could be either a bad button or bad LEDs? Can you try uploading a very simple sketch like…
void setup() {
}
void loop() {
setColor( WHITE );
}
…and see if you see any LEDs light up after it finishes the upload and verify cycle? By the time you see the “avrdude done.” message in the IDE, the code should be running on the blink.
Also maybe try unplugging the cable connected to the dev blink for maybe 10 seconds and then plug it back in again. The blink automatically gets a reset at the end of the upload, but maybe the chip is somehow in a very weird state?
Thanks!
Bigjosh, I tried running your program. I got the “avrdude done” message, but the blink’s lights did not turn on. At this point I have unplugged and reattached everything at least three times.
Let me know if you want to do some troubleshooting in the discord
We think the issue was that I had installed the development build of Arduino rather than the stable build. For some reason, the development build was not reading the Blinks library (we still don’t know why), but installing the stable build (1.8.13 as of today) fixed the issue.
Thank you all!
I tried joining the discord, but don’t have permission to post anywhere and could not access the channels listed in the system map. I’ve never used discord before.
FWIIW, I reinstalled Linux on my machine and I saw exactly this behavior. The dev kit was lit up, then I would upload something to it and it would go dark. No error from avrdude whatsoever. I do have multiple computers at home so I tried in a different one were it was working before and it worked so the issue is not the dev kit.
Note that in my case I was simply using the release version of Arduino so I have no way to fix it by using that. I will try to figure out what the issue might be and if I can find it out, I will let you know.
I think I figured it out. It seems that Arduino IDE changed the way the install the programs or something like that. Here is the command it is running:
/home/bga/.arduino15/packages/arduino/tools/avrdude/6.3.0-arduino17/bin/avrdude -C/home/bga/.arduino15/packages/arduino/tools/avrdude/6.3.0-arduino17/etc/avrdude.conf -v -patmega168pb -cusbtiny -Uflash:w:/tmp/arduino_build_82872/ZenFlow.ino.hex:i
If I try that command manually (after exporting the generated files and pointing it to the non with_bootloader version), it fails constantly in exactly the same way.
If I simply change the file to be the with_bootloader version, it works exactly as expected.
So I think what is happening is that Arduino suddenly decided (this is a from scratch installation) to not install the correct hex file.
@bigjosh any ideas on this one?
It seems Arduino is not using the command defined in “tools.avrdude.program.pattern” in platforms.txt and I guess it should. Very likely this is the actual issue. Why it is not using that command, I have no idea.
Possibly relevant: Arduino upload instruction ignores changes to platform.txt
Ok, figured it out: User error due to a terrible Arduino IDE interface.
Here is what I did:
The problem is that because I selected the programmer before installing the Blinks board files, The USBTiny ISP being used was from the previously selected platform (Arduino Yun, the default) so it would not pick the correct flags.
Selecting the Programmer again after installing and selecting the Blinks board fixes this.
I have fallen for stuff like this many times. Arg. The beta of the new Arduino Pro IDE was just released, hopefully they will take the opportunity to rework some of this stuff.