Tips and Tricks (Part 25)
Burn Arduino bootloader… or burn your time !
Problem: When trying to burn the bootloader on any Arduino compatible board using the AVRISP mkII, Arduino IDE reports a “avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device “usb“, “Error while burning bootloader.” smashing error message.
Although many people faced this problem and many other tried to provide an answer, few web sites contain a simple and yet efficient answer to this problem. So that I take the risk to write this “Ultimate”, “My own way”, “Alternative” procedure.
When this situation will occur ? Mostly after installing AVR Studio or Visual Studio avr plugin, or after updating the driver from the windows environment. On completion of such operation, it is very likely that the Device Manager screen will show such list:
The problem is that this version is not compatible with Arduino IDE and results in the above error message. Recovering from this situation is a two stages process:
- Downgrade the driver
- Upgrade avrdude
Downgrading the driver is pretty simple as long as you get the proper software package that you can download from >Here<. Extract the folder in a temporary folder and run the inf-wizard.exe from the bin sub-folder.
Here are the configuration forms
Click Next >
Select the device to install and click Next >
Check the device configuration and click Next >
Store the installation file AVRISP_mkII.inf in the temporary folder.
Press the Install Now.. button (unless you changed your mind)
You’ll get these splashing forms
And ultimately get this new list from the Device Manager
Half the way done !
Now we need to upgrade avrdude to rev. 6.1 from >Here<
Unzip the avrdude-6.1-mingw32.zip file and store it a temporary folder.
In your [my_arduino_folder]\hardware\tools\avr\bin folder, deactivate the original avrdude.exe file, by adding an extra character or so and copy the [my_temporary_folder]\avrdude-6.1-mingw32\avrdude.exe file to [my_arduino_folder]\hardware\tools\avr\bin folder
In your [my_arduino_folder]\hardware\tools\avr\etc folder, deactivate the original avrdude.conf file, by adding an extra character or so and copy the [my_temporary_folder]\avrdude-6.1-mingw32\avrdude.conf file to [my_arduino_folder]\hardware\tools\avr\bin folder
Done !
Ahhhhhhh !
Here are a couple of links which were helpful to me and contain fragmented although advanced information: https://goo.gl/8jn8I0, http://goo.gl/JCjfO1.
HTH