50 dollar robot LED not working

[javafiend]

Ok, well the title is a bit misleading.  The LED barely works and only when the servo is connected to the servo row that the LED resistor is directly connected to.  Even then it is very dim.  Is this working as intended or did I just really mess up?  I can post pictures if that will help.

P.S.  Judging by all of the 50 dollar robot questions, perhaps a forum dedicated to it is in order.  I know, lofty suggestions for my first post.

[Trumpkin]

can you post pics of the back of your board?

[airman00]

LED might be defective sort of .

when i give my LEDS too much voltage they sometimes still work , but become very dim. Are you sure you are using the right resistor?
 What happens when you connect your LED to the power of the 5V regulator directly?

[Kagi]

The led i ordered from digikey for the $50 robot was a dud. I coudlnt' get it to work no matter what I did. After checking and rechecking my circuit I ran down to radioshack and grabbed a small pack of them. Low and behold it worked fine after I put the new one in. So if you're confident your circuit is correct you might try just throwing another one in there. Hope this helps.

[javafiend]

I'm using a 1k-Ohm resistor on the LED and when I apply power from 2 AA's to the resistor I get a nice bright light from the LED.  I'll try to get some pics posted soon.

[javafiend]

ok, I have some pics

[javafiend]

I apologize for the bump, but can someone take a look at my board?  I am seriously considering starting over with it at this point.  Pictures are in the previous post, but I can get better pictures if needed. 

Thanks

[paulstreats]

have you got the board programmed? it only supposed to work when its programmed

[javafiend]

Unfortunately, I am currently experiencing technical difficulties programming it.  I can't load PonyProg and avrdude-gui tells me that access is denied to my COM port.

I thought, based on the tutorial, that the LED should at least light up when power was applied.  I could be completely wrong, however.

[rgcustodio]

Unfortunately, I am currently experiencing technical difficulties programming it.  I can't load PonyProg and avrdude-gui tells me that access is denied to my COM port.

this is not a problem with your board. it's a problem with your PC and user permissions. your account or username should have Administrator privileges.

I thought, based on the tutorial, that the LED should at least light up when power was applied.  I could be completely wrong, however.

in your previous post, you said the LED already lights up! so what gives?
yep the LED should light up when the board is programmed correctly (see my newest post).

[javafiend]

I did post earlier that the LED lights up only when a servo is plugged into the servo row that the LED resistor is directly connected to.  That leads me to believe that my board is not wired correctly and I'm having a helluva time figuring out where.

[paulstreats]

if i remember the schematic the led only lights up when the mcu pin it is attatched to pulls low. So it shouldnt light up reliably before its programmed however, it may be working off of floating ghost voltage (your servo should make this happen) since the mcu pins are just floating around until its programmed

[rgcustodio]

if i remember the schematic the led only lights up when the mcu pin it is attatched to pulls low. So it shouldnt light up reliably before its programmed

yep yep yep!
the LED is connected to the +5V regulator's output pin and PIND4. the user controls the LED. using LED_on() or LED_off(). if the robot is programmed correctly (using Admin's default code), the LED should be ON.

[javafiend]

That clears things up a lot!  So now it seems like my next hurdle is getting the thing programmed.  I found a couple of things online that I want to try when I get home.  Hopefully it solves the programming problem and I'll be up and running this evening.

Thanks again, guys!