Is my Teensy 3.1 faulty?

Please excuse any frustration that may filter through as I type this.

The long and short of it: I can't get a result other than "Please press the PROGRAM MODE BUTTON on your Teensy to upload your sketch" when I go to compile/upload a sketch.

I have purchased a Teensy 3.1. I connect it to the USB port, it flashes, which indicates that the default blink sketch is running and, presumably, that the board is functional.

I installed Arduino 1.6.5, later installing Teensyduino to insert the libraries, etc so that it recognises the Teensy 3.1, and of course Teensy.

I do a test sketch upload using one of the built-in Examples. I get the aforementioned "Please press the PROGRAM MODE BUTTON..." message in red.

I do that (press button). Re-upload. Same deal.

This time I start the upload then press the button. No different.

In all I've spent about 4 hours trying to get what I thought was a simple procedure to work, on 3 different Macs all with the same result. I've even tried using previous builds of Arduino.

It's as if the Mac isn't seeing the device, although it supplies power to it.

Is it likely that the Teensy is fubar'd? Is it possible I've missed out a crucial step or even done things out of sequence?

I'm reaching out to the community in hope that someone would be kind enough to help me solve this problem as I am very frustrated over this.

Thanks in advance,

David

If you see the Teensy program put it in "Help / Verbose Info" and post text results from that window. I've no MAC experience so don't know about drivers and issues - but I saw behavior as you describe when I had a bad USB cable. Do a 'Verify' build and then 'press the button' with the Verbose - that should show activity to report.

Hi defragster, thanks for your advice. Despite having used 2 USB cables (of the micro USB variety, I think?), I located another, and after putting it into Verbose Info, I noticed that it uploaded, due to the amount of IO going between the Mac and the Teensy.

Who would've thought? Faulty USB cable, despite the other 2 giving off all the signs that it was working. I would never have thought of trying another one.

I think this has solved the problem so I thank you very humbly for helping me fix this issue and quell the frustration!!

Awesome - glad to help in good time, that is frustrating.

Even weak Cables can supply power well enough - but the data lines are more sensitive. I found this using some ATtiny's that bitbang USB were very finicky even to new out of the box cables. The Teensy seemed much more robust - but I lost an hour once assuming the cable I had been using had to be good - nothing else worked to see it work and I swapped the cable and all was well.