Featherboard not recognised, red LED blinking fast

[Eloise Kuijer]

Hi everyone!

I was wondering whether anyone has experienced something similar.

After reflashing my Featherboards with a new sketch three of them are not starting up anymore (even though all others are fine) :(

One the non-responsive FEDs, the bootloader LED is blinking red fast. I think it might be stuck in some starting up loop but haven't found a way to pull it out. Things I've tried:

- disconnecting and restarting

- trying to activate bootloader mode

- connecting it to IDE to reflash the sketch, this doesn't work because the computer doesn't recognise it no matter what I do (also not listed under Ports (COM & LPT))

- hard reset by connecting the GND pin with what I think is the ERASE test pad on the back of the Featherboard (the pad on the other side of the USB without label, not 100% sure though, have tried others in the process to no avail), pressing the RESET button for 5s whilst holding the short. Then releasing the button whilst holding the short, finally releasing the short.

Is there any other way or are these boards burned? Anyone has ideas what happened to avoid this in the future?

All the best,

Eloise

[Matt Gaidica]

Hi Eloise,

That blinking suggests some code is running, so it's likely some kind of failure (perhaps SD?). Double tapping the RST button will put it into boot mode, and the red LED should fade in and out, allowing you to re-flash.

[Hamid Taghipourbibalan]

Hi Eloise,

I had a somewhat similar problem with my customized library, which killed the FEDs, but at least I could put the FEDs on bootloader mode and reflash them with the original FED3 library.
Just make sure the reset button is not faulty! Some of our newer FEDs (purchased in 2023ish) have faulty buttons, meaning that double-pressing will not put the FED into bootloader mode, maybe just give it a try, plug the FEDs into the USB port, and keep pressing the button, like sending a morse code! until it goes on bootloader mode.

Good luck.
Hamid.

Hamid Taghipourbibalan

Ph.D. Fellow in Behavioral Neuroscience, Mccutcheonlab, UiT, Tromsø, Norway

Contact:+4746566050

Skype ID: htbibalan_1

LINKEDIN

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[Eloise Kuijer]

Hi Matt and Hamid,

Thank you for your suggestions! 

When I try to doubletap to go to bootloader mode, it just continues to flash fast:( 

I think it might be the same issue as Hamid has, happen to know we are running the same customised library.

I spent some minutes morse-doubletapping the reset button but to no avail, I think I'll just get some new featherboards. @Hamid what I do notice is that when I press the reset button down, this turns the LED off, which makes me think the button might be okay, maybe it's something in the code that's preventing it from bootloadering (if this is even a verb). Did you see the same with your faulty ones? Or did the LED keep blinking as you press reset? I suspect the only solution to save these is a hard reset, but haven't figured out how.

Thank you both for thinking with me!

All the best,

Eloise

---

From: Hamid Taghipourbibalan <htbi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2025 5:24:49 am
To: Eloise Kuijer <eloise...@gmail.com>
Cc: fedf...@googlegroups.com <fedf...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Featherboard not recognised, red LED blinking fast

[Lex]

One additional thing you can try is to remove the Feather Adalogger board from the FED3 board and see if the issue still happens.  If it still happens you could have a faulty Feather board but they're just $20 from Adafruit to replace. If it lets you flash normally when it's not plugged into the FED3 board you can flash back to a working example and see if that solves your issue! 

-Lex

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