TI Launchpad "Bricked"?

[wt200999]

Energia and the Gamepad Tool use the same backend, so if it works in Energia, it should work in the Gamepad Tool as well. I am surprised that it did not take right away. I will see if I can replicate this and follow up, but I am glad you were able to get it working!

Were you using a VM in Linux to run the Gamepad Tool? We have seen an issue if the VM doesn't know to assign the LaunchPad to the guest OS the update can fail. When you update the debugger chip, the USB drops and reconnects, so if the VM doesn't grab it, the device doesn't finish updating.

[taichichuan]

Originally Posted by wt200999

Energia and the Gamepad Tool use the same backend, so if it works in Energia, it should work in the Gamepad Tool as well. I am surprised that it did not take right away. I will see if I can replicate this and follow up, but I am glad you were able to get it working!

Were you using a VM in Linux to run the Gamepad Tool? We have seen an issue if the VM doesn't know to assign the LaunchPad to the guest OS the update can fail. When you update the debugger chip, the USB drops and reconnects, so if the VM doesn't grab it, the device doesn't finish updating.

When the gamepad tool failed, it was running in native WinDoze 7 (64-bit). The launchpad was totally hosed with no USB serial interface available. I ran Energia in Linux to recover. Then verified that both my WinDoze VM (VmWare 11) and my native WinDoze machine could reprogram. For the VM, as long as you have the VM focused when you plug the device in, it defaults to capturing any new devices.

So, it was a bit convoluted, but everything is good again. :-)

Thanks,

Mike

[feverittm]

Just to add another data point to this thread...

Our launchpad had similar issues to those mentioned here. The Gamepad tool did not work at all (always gave the 500 series error without any logfile in the the logs directory). I used the more brute force mspdebug method described in this thread and after doing it twice it worked. I now have the luanchpad responding as a game controller (mode 1).

I now need to have the stidents check the data being sent from it to the driver station and make sure we can see the bi-directional response that we need.

Thanks

[mgurgol]

Originally Posted by mgurgol

I tried the FRC GamePad Tool again and received the same error.

After this, the Driver Station did not recognize the device. I redid the command line previously given and the device is not recognized by the Driver Station as a Gamepad.

Thanks for your help.

Note: The last line should read:

I redid the command line previously given and the device is recognized by the Driver Station as a Gamepad.

The command line procedure worked every time.

[wt200999]

That makes a lot more sense, thanks for the update!

[AlexanderTheOK]

Both our windows 8.1 and windows 7 machine have this issue too. We have tried updating the firmware through the command prompt and have gotten this error, no percentages of completedness, just the error.

MSP430_GetNumberOfUsbIfs
MSP430_GetNameOfUsbIf
Found FET: COM4
MSP430_Initialize: COM4
Firmware version is 30301004
MSP430_VCC: 3000 mV
MSP430_OpenDevice
tilib: MSP430_OpenDevice: Unknown device (error = 5)
tilib: device initialization failed

Running the gamepad tool again gives an "Error 5000" and the logfile gives the same as above. Running the commandline several times just gives the error every time. Thus, none of the above solutions have worked for either of our machines. It would be nice to see a consistent fix for this.

[andres18m]

Hi I have the same issue, plus everytime I connect my launchpad it get a shortcircuit, I have nothing connected to pins only jumpers, and they are on the default positions, if I take off the 3.3V and 5V jumpers the chip does not heat up. I'm so frustated, help !!!

[wt200999]

Originally Posted by andres18m

Hi I have the same issue, plus everytime I connect my launchpad it get a shortcircuit, I have nothing connected to pins only jumpers, and they are on the default positions, if I take off the 3.3V and 5V jumpers the chip does not heat up. I'm so frustated, help !!!

Under the normal configuration the MSP430 device should not be getting hot, this leads me to believe the main device is damaged. This is also why you cannot flash it with the tool. Do you have any idea what could have caused this damage? Did any pins get shorted together that should not have or one of the pins on the MSP430 connected to 5V?

Due to the damage, the only way to fix this would be to replace the board entirely.

[BenBernard]

Thanks @wt200999 for all the information in this thread. We encountered most of the problems described by others while flashing our launchpad tonight...and thanks to this thread we got it working.

What worked for us was running mspdebug as described multiple times--I think 5 was our magic number. Each time it got a little further along until the last time it completed successfully.