Serial communication on baby orangutan from Arduino IDE

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1

Edit: I will update this when I actually solve my problem, but for now I want to say that I found the right track. I am not using the Pololu USB AVR programmer correctly, according to Arduino, BabyO (B-168), and Serial Communications?.

Edit2:
I confirm, it was my fault. I didn’t realize the Pololu Usb AVR programmer needs additional lines connecting to the RX and TX lines. Everthing is dandy now. Where I was observing the LED behaving weird, was because the red led is on PD0 (or PD1, I don’t remember, but one of the serial com pins)

Hello!

I’m running a baby orangutan from the Arduino environment. I’m using the arduino environment in part because I’m a newb, and also because after I leave my internship I need the other people at work to be able to upload code without any problems, and I do find Arduino very beginner friendly.

I’m using the Pololu USB AVR programmer (super nice), and I can load a blinking LED sketch. I see the LEDs blink. Then, when I use arduino’s built in serial functions (which I’ve used on other arduino board projects without problem), I notice my sketch hangs up.

Case1:
Blink led example works.

Case2: adding some basic commands that also serial print “ledon” and “ledoff” to the blink loop, makes the sketch hang with the led on, but no other information*. *I’ll note that my code has me declare that the pin1 (baby-o led pin) is an Output before I say Serial.begin(115200). I’ll try running it with Serial.begin first, to see if I don’t get a lit LED in that case.

Case3: Removing the serial.println commands,so that all I do, besides the basic blink sketch, is add “Serial.begin(115200);” and I have the same problem with sketch hanging up with a lit led but not a properly blinking led.

Case4: I take the same code, and comment out Serial.begin(115200), and I have my blinking LED sketch working again.

In all cases, I don’t see anything (garbage or not) when I switch the the USB-ttl com port and watch the port.

So I assume that somehow arduino’s built in serial command functions don’t implement properly on the Baby-O. However, in the documentation that I can find the only reference I get is that “arduino’s ide has it’s own serial functions” and implicitly that you use those. I’m also surprised when I google this situation I don’t find any information, which I would expect to find if the baby-O doesn’t work with arduino’s built in serial commands.

Do I need to move to a different serial function system, or am I missing something else altogether? I appreciate any advice.

2

For the record, from documentation this is the gist of what I can find:

It suggests that arduino’s serial functions should work. And I don’t see why it wouldn’t, when it uses the same chip. I’m going to try #include <pololu/orangutan.h> , and using those functions, but I’m a bit out of my ballpark since I don’t really know what’s technically going on.

3

So i tested something new.

Case1:

int led = 1;
void setup() {                
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);     
}
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   
  delay(1000);               
  digitalWrite(led, LOW);    
  delay(1000);            
}

Result: The red led blinks on and off for something ~1 second. (Presumably, it’s actually blinking every 0.8 seconds, because delay() assumes a 16mHz clock speed.)

Case2:

int led = 1;
void setup() {                
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);     
  digitalWrite(led,LOW);
  Serial.begin(9600);   //THIS IS THE ONLY LINE CHANGED
}
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   
  delay(1000);               
  digitalWrite(led, LOW);    
  delay(1000);           
}

Result: Red led is stuck “on.” Sadness.

4

I can confirm that I tried a few more things, and it stops at serial.begin(9600), with the led ON. I tried “do a bunch of blinking, then turn LED off, then do serial.begin(9600)” and found that result. I’m going to investigate the serial functions in Arduino and see if it’s a simple switch.

However, because Arduino is using the same chip, I don’t understand how that could be it.