SparkFun Forums 

Where electronics enthusiasts find answers.

Discussions on the software and hardware for Atmel's STK standard.
By nebug
#127344
I am switching from PICAXE to an Arduino clone board (XINO) wo USB. I have the PICAXE USB Programmer. Looking at schematics, both this programmer and the FTDI Basic use the FT232RLSSOP chip and have same basic hookup except the DSR reset and LED Status. I can't seem to get the IDE download to work. I manually reset the arduino and verified that my reset circuit works. The error message is copied to below.
The baud rate for the port is set to 9600-8-1-N.
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51

I checked the tutorials with no help. I found a video on YouTube of a guy who used the Arduino FTDI Programmer to program a PICAXE and used a TTL hex inverter on the signals. I am wondering if the FT232 chip Sparkfun uses on these two boards is somehow different. I have some 2N3904 transistors around so I could build a circuit to invert the signals.

Am I overlooking something?
Should I weasel out and just buy the FTDI Basic board?
Should I build the TTL inverter adapter? (Not a thrill for me if not useful.)

Any suggestions including RTFM appreciated.
By Evil Genius jr.
#127366
I tried the same thing and never got it to work. I think the picaxe cable signals are inverted though at least that's what I found. You can build your own converter or do it with software using FTDprog.
By nebug
#127884
OK This is how it turned out. I built a couple inverters from 2N3904 transistors with 4.7Kohm resistors in the collector to VCC circuit and 10.5Kohm resistors in the base circuit. This reversed the signal to and from the FTDI PicAxe USB interface to the Arduino clone. I waited until I got the binary sketch size: message when downloading to press the reset button and everything worked fine. I could have just reversed the parameters in FT_PROG on the chip but I didn't want to make my USB interface non-standard (It just confuses others when they use it and I can still use the board with PicAxe processors) I will probably buy the FTDI Basic board and give the PicAxe-USB board to my son so as to encourage him to learn a little about microcontrollers. This little convertor board I built can be used (with a little modification) with the FTDI Basic board to still download PicAxe Chips. Thanks for you suggestion/input. Later.
Regards,
Old Toad in Nebraska, USA
By techbitar
#142293
Hi nebug, Glad you got it working. I am trying the same thing (to program an already opti bootloaded ATmega328p via Arduino IDE 1.0 using the Sparkfun PICAXE FTDI usb board) but with no luck. If you had to go the FT_PROG route, how would you software-configure the PICAXE FTDI usb adapter to talk to an ATmega328p? Also, considering the FTDI adapter has a mini audio jack, how would you pull cables from it to connect to the ATmega328. And finally, how to set up the Arduino IDE 1.0 to perform this function. I would be very grateful for any assistance.