Partially Solved My R1 just stopped working altogether - Arduino failure

Today I tried to start a new print, after a week or so of inactivity. However, RepetierHost couldn't communicate with the printer: The log showed a message "No start signal received", and the commands kept queueing up. Manual control of the steppers or the extruder had no effect. Never had that happen before.

Then I noticed that Fritzing was also running on my PC - and the latest version has a "Code View" feature that lets you directly upload sketches to Arduinos. So I figured that might interfere with the serial communication, so I quit Fritzing and tried again, same problem. Rebooting the PC didn't help.

So I guessed that maybe Fritzing might have somehow corrupted the firmware on the R1's Arduino - after all, it's a Beta, and the "Code View" feature is new. So I fired up the Arduino IDE and tried to re-upload the Marlin firmware (I have a modified firmware anyway since I upgraded to the E3DV6 a while ago). But still - while the Arduino was correctly identified as "Arduino Mega 2560 on COM5", the upload failed with a timeout:

"avrdude: stk500v2_getsync(): timeout communicating with programmer".

Luckily, I happened to have an unused Arduino Mega 2560 lying around, so I tried uploading the firmware there - worked like a charm.

I still didn't know if the R1's Arduino was zapped or if something else (like the RAMPS board or some defective wiring) caused the problem, so I removed the controller from the printer and tried connecting the naked Arduino to upload the firmware: Same problem, looks like somehow the Arduino got trashed.

After replacing the printer's Arduino with the spare one, RepetierHost could connect just fine, and the printer is up and running again.

My questions:

• Has anyone experienced a failed Arduino before on the R1? Any idea what could have caused this?
• Is it imaginable that running Fritzing in parallel with RepetierHost could have somehow damaged the programmer on the Arduino?
• Anything I might try to save the Arduino, or is a hardware failure likely?

Thanks for any ideas and insight.

 

Thanks, guys.

Yeah, right? Seems very implausible to me, too. I just brought it up since running the latest version of Fritzing was the only variable I introduced (to my knowledge) since when I was last able to print successfully.

Interesting point. I just reconnected the old Arduino board, and measured the output voltage. The 3.3 pin is giving me 3.28V, but the 5V pin reads something in the 160mV range... So it looks indeed like the on-board voltage regulator got fried.

I see. So together with Ziggy's info about the hard-working voltage regulators, I guess my problem is not a very exotic one, but something that is expected to occur occasionally and eventually, due to some underdimensioned electronics in the R1 design?

Thanks, I'll have a look at those. But from what it looks like right now, I guess my Arduino Mega really got fried.

Hehe... Thanks, but no - just dumb luck. I ordered that Arduino Mega a while ago for a robotics project (InMoov), but hadn't used it yet. But after today's experience, I ordered another backup Mega right away, should be delivered tomorrow. Once it's here, I'll repeat the experiment (running Fritzing and RepetierHost together), just in case. For science! ;-)

But hm, that last part of your reply got me a bit confused, and intrigued: What do you mean by "full set of motor driver cards"? Aren't the stepper drivers all on the RAMPS board? Are there any other driver boards that I'm not aware of?

 

I see... Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware that the RAMPS boards come in different configurations / can be populated with additional drivers.

And btw, how can I mark this thread as "resolved"? I can't seem to find any option for that.

 

Click Edit Title

 

There should be a thread tools menu up top and an edit thread option. There you can change the status.