ATMega328P "AVRDude: Could not find USBTiny device (0x1781 / 0xc9f)"

Question

Good day,

I recently assembled a PCB on an ATMega328P-based microcontroller in my own design. I feel good in the circuit itself, since I managed to download the Arduino Blink sketch using the Sparkfun AVR Pocket Programmer.

After downloading this sketch, I noticed that ATMega is using its internal generator. I did not feel comfortable changing fuses, I tried installing the Arduino bootloader again through the Arduino IDE.

At this point, a number of errors were thrown, but the board began to use its external clock and run the Blink program correctly.

I can no longer upload another code to the chip, since I could not get AVRDude to work on my Mac, I installed AVRDude 5.1 on my Windows 8.1 PC.

Then I connected the device and sent:

avrdude -c usbtiny -p atmega328p 

It just came back:

 avrdude: Error: Could not find USBtiny device ( 0x1781/0xc9f) 

Am I inadvertently skewed with the bits of the chip? How to save this chip?

UPDATE: I was able to install AVRDude 6.0.1, and now the error is being read:

 avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1 

The full result can be seen here:

Answer 1

AdaFruit 3.3V trinket profile will also be included in this error message. Please note that you need to activate the FIRST bootloader by pressing the reset button. The red LED blinks a bit, THEN the boot from the IDE starts. Otherwise, you will get the error above.

Do not wait too long, otherwise you will skip the download window and you will get an error again. The red LED should blink.

I thought I had damaged my advice, but the procedure is described in the documentation. (Arduino Uno does not need this.)

Answer 2

From the Adafruit Support Channel: https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=97879

Try installing a cheap / old USB hub between Mac and Gemma.

There is a known issue with the Gemma downloader for USB-3 ports, which are standard on all recent Mac computers. Older and cheaper USB hubs use USB-2 and act as protocol translators.

Also later:

Test your USB cable by connecting a known working device to it. We see that at least one person per day gets caught in the charging cable.

Answer 3

I had a similar problem with Ademruit Gemma; I found that on a Mac, both USB ports on a Mac do not work. I plugged it into the display's USB port, and the connection worked.

Answer 4

I had the same error: avrdude: Error: Could not find a USBtiny device (0x1781 / 0xc9f) with MacBook Air. tried it with a USB 2.0 hub and it works great. I had to use the same with my windows desktop.

Answer 5

Something is wrong with you. Get a multimeter and check + 5VDC and GND are coming out of the correct pins.

Answer 6

I just solved the problem by choosing USBtinyISP for my programmer instead of using gemma. This is an alternative to adafruit, so this may not apply to everyone.