Comments: BadgerHack
Looking for answers to technical questions?
We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.
If you've found an issue with this tutorial content, please send us your feedback!
I have a Badgerstick 2016 from DXCreate at SXSW in Austin,tX. I used Codebender.cc to run my hello world on a Window laptop successfully. Then I tried it on a nightly build Arduino IDE, followed BadgerStick tutorial, downloaded Sparfun LED 8x7 array , Charlieplex library. BadgerStick display also works with Codebender Hello World. But I get the following Warnings:
WARNING: Category'' in library EEPROM is not valid. Setting to ' Uncategorized' WARNING: Catertory'' in library SoftwareSerial is not valid. Setting to 'Uncategorized' Warning; platform.txt from core 'Arduino AVR Boards' contains deprecated recipe.ar.pattern=" ........."{archive_file_path)""(object_file)".Consider upgrading this core.
But with these warnings, not errors, the code works. Any suggestions....
These are just warnings on the metadata in the library files that are used by the Arduino IDE library manager. It doesn't affect your code functionality at all, and the warnings simply mean that the libraries (which are customized for these boards) cannot be searched for by their category tag. We'll get those updated though - thanks for pointing that out!
It likely has to do with outdated EEPROM and SoftwareSerial libraries, in that they need an associated library.properties file. They are just warnings, so you can probably ignore them for the time being. http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/19096/warning-category-in-library-any-library-is-not-valid-setting-to-uncatego.
Super cool booth and activity. I haven't stopped playing with the badger since I got home from the maker faire. The only problem is I've spent all of the "playing" time trying to update the message on it. Codeplex and Arduino are not able to connect. avrdude is really unhappy. Everything I've searched is not helping. Any advice for connecting to this little guy?
Can you copy the exact error message here? Also, what operating system are you using?
OS X (El Capitan) latest FTDI driver installed Arduino IDE 1.6.5 error: avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 10 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
Windows VM on the same machine gives me a different resp code each time I try
I'll see if I can replicate this on a Mac (I do not have OS X myself). In the mean time, do you have access to another Arduino you could try? Here is a simple Blinky sketch: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/alternative-arduino-interfaces/codebender.
Which com port do you have selected in Codebender? Additionally, if you were trying it with the Arduino IDE, you will need to download the BadgerStick files from the girhub repository and copy the badgerstick folder to <Arduino>/hardware. The "Hack Your Badge" section has been updated to explain this more clearly.
In the end, I took it to my work computer (win8.1) and the sketch uploaded from CodeBender like butter. I was also successful in displaying it upside down by inverting the array of pins. Now it sits in the USB port of my monitor displaying my job title. Next step: get it to display when our continuous integration software builds fail/succeed.
For documentation sake: the available device is /dev/cu.usbserial-AL00F27Q and I had the right content in the hardware folder. I'll keep trying to figure out what's up with OS X though. This is my first arduino, so I don't yet have anything else to experiment with.
Glad to hear it worked, and that's a cool way to use the LED display :) I tried it on an OS X Yosemite computer, and I could get it to work. Perhaps there are issues with El Capitan and the FTDI driver? I have not been able to test any Arduino platform on El Capitan, but it looks like people are having issues with FTDI on El Capitan.
Enjoyed helping the neighbors kid build a Badger at NoCo Minimakers faire. It was the first time he's soldered anything. He's already hooked it to his computer and learning to program it. Nice piece of hardware for FREE. It's like an Arduino promini but with an FTDI USB-Serial chip. I'm amazed they're not for sale, but it kinda makes it kinda special. Already a bunch of hacks come to mind, and I learned what "Charlieplexing" is... THX
There has been some back and forth with engineering on the design. They are working on something for the storefront, but it will be slightly different than what was given out at NoCo. I'm glad to hear you had a good time!
Any chance you are going to provide support for the Badger with Arduino IDE 1.6.5? I don't really want to start using an older rev just for this.
Badgers are already supported on Arduino 1.6.5. You will need to go to https://github.com/sparkfun/BadgerStick, and download the repository ("Download ZIP"). Extract the archive and copy the whole BadgerStick-master/badgerstick directory to <Arduino install directory>/hardware. Open up Arduino, and you should see "BadgerStick (3.3V, 4MHz)" appear under Tools -> Board. Hope that helps!
Won't this require a merge between the existing boards.txt and the one in the git repo?
That used to be the case, but the badgerstick/ folder contains its own boards.txt. Arduino treats that folder as a separate "group" of Arduino-compatible boards and shows up in the IDE that way.