[Noisebridge-discuss] arduino self-corruption?

[Steve Castellotti]

On 09/05/2012 09:11 PM, Jake wrote:
> does anyone here have experience with an arduino "bricking" itself or 
> otherwise corrupting its own program?
>
> Reloading the bootloader with an ISP programmer brings it back to 
> normal, but this problem is not supposed to happen.
>
> it could have something to do with low power supply voltage?
>
> I am trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening. 


     I don't know if this is relevant, but here's my experience with a 
"bricked" Arduino:


     I have an Arduino UNO (SMD R2) in front of me here which will show 
up as a serial device when I connect it to my computer, will do all the 
correct onboard-LED-blinken-lights when you hit the reset button, and so 
on, appearing to be completely functional, but you simply can't write 
any programs to it. It simply hangs with a "programmer not responding" 
error message.

     My assumption is that the writeable memory is somehow borked. I 
have no idea how many write-cycles it has undergone but I would estimate 
around a hundred, perhaps less.


     Verbose output looks like this:

Binary sketch size: 6596 bytes (of a 32256 byte maximum)
avrdude -v -v -v -v -patmega328p -carduino -P/dev/ttyACM0 -b115200 -D 
-Uflash:w:/tmp/build1204151697317788615.tmp/drive.cpp.hex:i

avrdude: Version 5.11.1, compiled on Jan 22 2012 at 19:19:32
          Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
          Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch

          System wide configuration file is "/etc/avrdude/avrdude.conf"
          User configuration file is "/root/.avrduderc"
          User configuration file does not exist or is not a regular 
file, skipping

          Using Port                    : /dev/ttyACM0
          Using Programmer              : arduino
          Overriding Baud Rate          : 115200
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20]
avrdude: ser_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

avrdude done.  Thank you.


     I have tried different baud rates to no avail, and the same program 
works perfectly on another UNO (R3) as well as a Mega ADK.


Cheers

Steve