Hi, I think I’m having this exact problem with my Sakura set, though at first I chalked it up to dead batteries in some blinks. After changing a lot of batteries (probably unnecessarily so) the problem persists. I don’t have immediate access to my Dev kit, but when I get a chance to do so, should flashing the above binaries to their respective blinks do the trick to fix the problem? If I’m able to do it soon, I’ll report back.
Yes it should fix the issue. 
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I have re-flashed Both Trifoil and Bandits and corrected the issues, however I did kill the original Trifoil Blink in the process. so loaded it on to a blank that I had. Pro tip Use the sticker to block the battery contacts so you don’t fry your Blink with the programmer by mistake.
It looks like my Sakura set is behaving strangely as well.
When doing a sleeper hold they don’t turn off correctly and also learning games seams to have issues.
Will try re flashing later
So this is a very interesting topic to me as I develop, fail, develop, get better, etc. etc. What would a patch in this ecosystem look like?
I can confirm that my Bandits and Trifoil blinks are exhibiting this behavior. Am I to understand that flashing these two hex files will correct them for those of us with a dev kit?
(I have not yet flashed them to a blank, I will do that as well)
Re-flashed Trifoil and Bandits using the files and commands @jbobrow posted in the OP:
avrdude -p m168pb -P usb -c usbtiny -U flash:w:<filename>.hex
I didn’t have to get fancy like @L.C. Both blinks can learn now. Using macOS Catalina, newer devkit, and avrdude from homebrew.
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Flashed those .hex files on two blanks and they teach and learn fine across 5 learn and 5 teach attempts each.
I re-flashed the retail blinks and again tested 5 teach and 5 learn with each with no failures.
Certainly not a comprehensive test, but teaching and learning was failing 100% of the time prior to the re-flash.
(Also, had to change the :r: to :w: in your instructions Jonathan, hope that’s right)
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Same here. I actually didn’t notice that minute difference in what i pasted and his post. Maybe Jonathan should edit his original post.
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I can confirm that I am seeing exactly this issue with the retail Trifoil and Bandit blinks. They interfere with the game sharing process.
I will try reflashing later today.
The patch appears to be working. I reflashed the retail Blinks and they seem to be able to teach other Blinks, and do not interfere with the game sharing process.
On Mac OS I installed avrdude with brew (brew install avrdude) though I suspect specifying the path to the Arduino copy of avrdude would probably work too. (/Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Java/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avrdude)
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Seems to work here.
I tried putting my retail Trifoil and Bandits blinks into a regular program share group and they both came out with red flashes afterwards.
Just flashed them both with the .hex files shared on this post and they both now share their game without issues and receive games from a group without any problems
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When trying to flash the .hex files from the command line I keep getting the error: AVR Part “m168pb” not found. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to resolve it? Thanks in advance!
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I used m168 and the -F flag to override signature checking. Not the best idea, but we have well known hardware here so gave it a shot and my blanks and retail blinks came out fine.
Your other option is to edit the configs for avrdude to add the part. There are several tutorials to do that.
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Thanks for the help @IndyJinx. I’m not the most tech savvy person in the world, so pardon the slow uptake. If I’m understanding you correctly, the command line code should look like this right?
avrdude -p m168 -F usb -c usbtiny -U flash:w:bandits.hex
I tried using that command and now it’s saying that there is no such file as bandits.hex in the directory. I have it’s saved locally in my downloads folder. Does the .hex file need to be placed somewhere specific for it to be recognized? Again, I’m pretty tech illiterate, so I appreciate the additional insight!
avrdude -p m168 -F -P usb -c usbtiny -U flash:w:bandits.hex
That’s what I used. The bandits.hex part has to be the full path to the file relative to your current directory. So the easiest is to run the command from where the .hex file is, or copy the .hex file to where you are running it from.
And no worries about the question, if anything I’m sorry for assuming any knowledge! This isn’t your everyday activity unless you happen to be a professional prototyper!
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@IndyJinx That worked like a charm! Thanks again for the help! I always appreciate the opportunity to learn new things, and now I have some more functional blinks as well!
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After searching with different combinations of keywords, I finally found a relevant thread about how to install avrdude, titled Trouble figuring out .hex uploads. About 80% down jbobrow’s lovely response, there are links for a Mac version and a Windows version.
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I found that one too, but I still don’t know how to actually upload .hex files. But for the Sakura Pack BGA made a very simple version
In the end, my installer just runs avrdude like this:
avrdude -B 5 -v -patmega168pb -C /path/to/avrdude.conf -cusbtiny -Uflash:w:file.hex:i -u