[Lab] Open Question: Dumbest Thing You've Done While Making

[Michael Sepa]

Dumbest thing I've ever done?

I was working on adding a watchdog timer to one of the Arduino robots I use when teaching my children's robotics course.  The timer just didn't seem to be working, so I kept shortening the timeout.  Turns out the timer wasn't the problem--my code wasn't providing me the feedback I expected.  Once the timer was shorter than the boot time, the Arduino got stuck in an endless reboot cycle.  I couldn't even interrupt it long enough to establish contact to reload code.  As soon as it happened I knew exactly what was wrong and realized my mistake, but there was no way back out.  Suddenly had a new, high priority project--learning how to burn the boot loader directly onto the AVR chip.

Luckily, I have a AVR development board because I used to write code directly for the AVR chips before I fell in love with the ease of Ardunio programming.  With that background, and Google, I was able to figure out how to regain control of my chip and Arduino board.  Took a few hours, but on the bright side I learned a new skill.

Regards,
Michael Sepa

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsepa
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.sepa
michaelsepa at gmail.com






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