SeeedDuino/Grove and the story of not being able to upload programs

Question

I am new to the arduino world and wanted to start playing with the micro controllers, I am a .NET developer by trade so not completely new to this kind of world.

I purchased a seeedduino v3 and a Grove started kit (No soldering skills here) and can't even get the basics to work.

I am setting up a simple button to light up the LED program. I have had it run once or twice but it seems really hit or miss on whether or not the Arduino IDE actually gets the program onto the seeedduino.

Arduino IDE (1.5.6-r2) set-up: Followed setup instructions found here: SeeedDuino v3

• Board: Arduino Duemilanove or Diecimila
• Processor: ATmega328
• Port: COM4 [this is what popped up once device was plugged in]
• Button is installed on D3
• LED is installed on D7

Program:

int button = 3;
int LED = 7;
void setup() 
{
 pinMode(button, INPUT); //define button on INPUT devices
 pinMode(LED, OUTPUT); //define LED on OUTPUT device
}
void loop() 
{
 int buttonState = digitalRead(button); //read the status of hte button
 if(buttonState == HIGH) //also used (buttonState == 1)
 {
 digitalWrite(LED, HIGH); //also used digitalWrite(LED, 1) 
 }
 else
 {
 digitalWrite(LED, LOW); //also used digitalWrite(LED, 0)
 }
}

Upload Verbose Message:

avrdude: verifying ...
avrdude: 1070 bytes of flash verified
avrdude: Send: Q [51] [20] 
avrdude: Recv: . [14] 
avrdude: Recv: . [10] 
avrdude done. Thank you.

I have only had the LED from this program turn on twice, then reloading it ruins it.

SIDE NOTE

If I try and run Burn BootLoader I get this message-

avrdude: Version 5.11, compiled on Sep 2 2011 at 19:38:36
 Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
 Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch
 System wide configuration file is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino/hardware/tools/avr/etc/avrdude.conf"
 Using Port : usb
 Using Programmer : stk500v2
avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device "usb"

• jippie: You had a USB-problem too: 'avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device "usb"'. Always verify if your device actually got the port assigned you expect it to have assigned. Not sure if you can assign a device a static COM-port on Windows, I know it is possible on Linux.
• Cubicle.Jockey: Yeah I had ended up forcing it to be COM251 to be consistent. Thanks.

Answer 1

OK mystery solved!

I ended up getting Visual Micro Debugger plug-in for my Visual Studio 2013 since I am native .NET programmer. I could see that the code was indeed loaded onto the board and when I pressed the button it was indeed getting to the line of code for setting the digital LED to HIGH.

It was a very unfortunate case of trying different components and learning I actually had 3 dead LEDs and one bad cable. After getting functioning ones it's all good. :) unlucky me just had 4 bad parts in my kit.

Output from Visual Studio Debugging:

Legend:
line 12 = button state check
line 16 = button pressed turn on LED
line 20 = button not pressed turn off LED
=================OUTPUT====================
14:01:04.372 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 12 loop() 
14:01:04.372 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 16 loop() 
14:01:04.481 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 10
14:01:04.481 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 12 loop()
14:01:04.592 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 16 loop()
14:01:04.592 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 10
14:01:04.696 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 12 loop()
14:01:04.697 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 20 loop()
14:01:04.804 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 10
14:01:04.804 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 12 loop()
14:01:04.912 SeeedDuinoPlayground.ino, line 20 loop()