Adafruit Trinket Frustrations

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Sammie Smith

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Feb 10, 2015, 7:20:45 PM2/10/15
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Hi everyone~
I am so excited to use our new Trinkets and all the fun Neopixel tools!  However, my tech department and I cannot seem to get our trinkets to work.

We have...
1.  Finally gotten drivers to upload and have two computers that now recognize the trinket
2.  Added the necessary library to include the trinket from the pulldown "Tools"/:Board" so we can see our boards.
3.  Run a practice code with no success....

Here is the error we keep getting...

avrdude:  error:  usbtiny_transmit:  usb_control_msg:  sending control message failed, win error:  A device attached to the system is not functioning.


it goes on but you get the idea....


Also, the Adafruit Trinket info I have says to use the Adafruit Trinket 8MHz but we are wondering if the 16 MHz is better...our trinket is the 5V.  Any thoughts on that??

Thanks!  Looking for some guidance!
Sammie

David Held

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Feb 10, 2015, 8:13:21 PM2/10/15
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I have had a lot of wrestling matches with this one. First, I'm assuming you are using a PC. The only issues that I have had with Macs is the wrong board or programmer selected.

If you are using a PC, there maybe be one driver issue your missing and/or PCs take to damn long to compile the code and the Trinket times out.

Driver issue - did you install the Trinket USB drivers? If not download the drivers here. Click on the USBTinyISB.

Timing issue - Couple of tested and untested solutions here:
1. Press the UPLOAD button in Arduino IDE, wait about 5 seconds (+/-) then press the Trinket reset button.
2. Talk to Adafruit about a patch to the bootloader that will increase the 10 second windows to upload the code to 20 seconds.
3. I just saw that Adafruit changed their Trinket Intro Help in the Learn section of their website. They now have a page about programing with AVRdude, this may help. https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-trinket/programming-with-avrdude
5. I read this morning that Arduino just releases version 1.6. This may help as it said that it will autodetect the board and port.
6. Get a Mac to program the Trinket.

Good luck. Let me know what helps and what doesn't. It's been very frustrating. BTW, some of the Trinkets I've purchased were supposed to be 16Kz but are 8 and visa vera, so try different settings.

Feel free to contact me off list.

David Held
Poughkeepsie Day School



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David Held
Dir. of Technology
Poughkeepsie Day School
260 Boardman Road
Poughkeepsie, NY 12603
www.poughkeepsieday.org
845.462.7600 ext 299
many minds, one world

Sammie Smith

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Feb 11, 2015, 2:31:06 PM2/11/15
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It has been a very frustrating endeavor.  What our IT guy figured out today is that it won't work on our PC when a mouse is usb attached.  We have decided to try to use two old laptops that will solely be used for the trinket programming.
 
We'll see what happens.
Sammie

David Held

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Feb 11, 2015, 4:05:36 PM2/11/15
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Let me know how it works out. I'll be playing around with it more too. I'll let you know how it goes. I may also switch to a Sparkfun product.


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