FTDI + Peggy 2LE help

reid

Hello EMS

I just finished soldering a Peggy 2LE I got years ago (better late than never?) and all the LEDs work but I am having trouble uploading Arduino sketches to it. 

I installed the FTDI drivers on my MacBook Pro, I have an off brand FTDI board (off brand like this) that I have triple checked I am connecting properly and still no luck. The main error message I get is:

avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0xdd

No matter how many times I restart my computer or reinstall the drivers it doesnt want to work. Am I missing something really obvious? Any suggestions will be so appreciated! I am trying to avoid having to buy a $20 TTL cable.

Thank you!

-Reid

Windell Oskay

Hard to say for sure. An issue with the Peggy (for example an incomplete solder joint or backwards component somewhere) can sometimes create a programming error, even when everything else is working properly.

Did your adapter come with any documentation about which pin is which? Not every FTDI adapter has the pins in the same order, so the first thing to check would be to make sure that your device has a 1:1 match between its pin order and that of the standard FTDI cable.

Second, at $3.30 (about what it would cost us to buy the chip and connectors in large quantity -- without pcb or assembly or margin), there's more than a little chance that this is a counterfeit FTDI chip-- FTDI has a long-running cold war with the counterfeit manufacturers, and has various ways to detect and disable devices like this from within the driver. 

Windell Oskay

Saw this page today, which shows off counterfeit FTDI chips on an adapter that looks just like yours: https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2017/03/fixing-fake-ftdi-ft232rl-adapters-ssop.html

reid

Woah! Counterfeit chips?! Thats so wild. I guess I will invest in a real FTDI cable. Thank you for the help Windell!