MENTA DoA

Breakout boards, sensors, other Adafruit kits, etc.

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
good-ham
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2013 2:10 pm

MENTA DoA

Post by good-ham »

Hi,

I ordered a MENTA kit recently and finally found the time to put it together yesterday. When I got to the step where I was supposed to check the power supply everything looked good. I had the expected green light using a 9v battery and an adapter cable. I finished the kit, but didn't get the red light to blink as the instructions said I should. Hit the reset button, nothing. Manually shorted across reset, nothing.Tried to upload a sketch just for grins, but it timed out. I went back and double-checked all my joints and they look good. OK, they look functional. :) I made sure the chip was oriented correctly. I checked the red LED by applying power directly to it, and it worked. Measuring the rails on the board, at the output of the regulator and at pins 7 and 8 on the chip (chip pins 7 and 8, not arduino pins D7 and D8) I get a consistent 4.9is v. I tried looking at the oscillator output with an oscilloscope - yes, I know they make special probes for that sort of thing, but some people reported luck using their probe set on 10x - but the results were strange. I got a clean 34 kHz wave form. I'm I'm writing that off to a measurement error at the moment. I next plan on digging out a 328p and burning a boot loader onto it to see if it's the chip, but I've got some work stuff going on, so it will have to wait for the weekend. In the mean time, I thought I'd ask to see if anyone can see anything obvious I might have missed. High res photos below. Forgive the smudgy, linty bottom. Trying to make it easier to see the solder joints, I tried a new flux cleaner that I just bought. Unfortunately, it left a nasty residue that I briefly tried to wipe off with a handy paper towel.

Thanks,
Greg


Image

Image

Image

User avatar
adafruit_support_bill
 
Posts: 88086
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:11 am

Re: MENTA DoA

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Looks like a good clean build overall (Don't worry about the lint. Flux removers usually take a couple applications to get rid of all the stickiness). From the symptoms, I suspect your chip is missing a bootloader. Contact [email protected] with a link to this thread and ask for a replacement Menta processor.

User avatar
vzaigrin
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2013 9:23 am

Re: MENTA DoA

Post by vzaigrin »

Hi

The same situation.
I ordered two Menta, built it, and got the same error: no red blinks on reset, unable to upload any sketch.
I have fresh Atmel Atmega 328P with bootloader.
I replaced chips in Menta and they began work fine.
I think that chips in Menta were without bootloader.
It is not a problem to burn bootloader into chips.
But check your factory.

User avatar
adafruit_support_bill
 
Posts: 88086
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:11 am

Re: MENTA DoA

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

@vzaigrin - Thanks for the heads-up. I'll check into it! :)

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Other Products from Adafruit”