swerve drive with arduino mega 2560

[Mike Bortfeldt]

Hi Becky,

I just ran through an installation of the Arduino software (I needed to upgrade anyway) and downloaded to a Mega and will list the steps that I went through to get it to work (there may be other ways, this is just what I used). Most of this is just a repeat of what others have said above.

1) Open a new sketch and cut/paste the Blink code example that can be found here near the bottom of the page. This is just to have a known good sketch to test.
2) In the menu item Tools->Board select "Arduino/Genuino Mega or Mega 2560"
3) In the menu item Tools->Programmer select "AVR ISP"
4) Verify your code by clicking on the left hand button with a Check Mark in it just below the menu items (The word "Verify" should display to the right of the buttons when you hover your mouse over it). It should return some messages at the bottom if the IDE indicating how large the sketch is and global variable use.
5) Plug in your Mega if you haven't already done so.
6) In the menu item Tools->Port, select the your Mega. Mine was labeled "COM3 (Arduino/Genuino Mega or Mega 2560)". Yours may have a different COM number.
7) Upload to the Mega the Blink program by pressing the right arrow button next to the verify button you used earlier. To the right of the buttons it should show the word "Upload" when you hover over it with your mouse. After a few seconds a message indicating "Done uploading." should be shown below your sketch and above the message area it it worked correctly. Also, the led on the mega (yellow on mine) will be blinking at 1 second intervals.

This worked on mine. If this works for you, then you should be able to upload your own sketch, but you may have to change the Board, Programmer & Port again (Steps 2,3 & 6) after you open your sketch. If this doesn't work, if you can post any error messages you are seeing, that would help us identify the problem.

Mike