New (better) process for updating firmware

[admin]

I am now recommending a new app called QMK Toolbox for updating the firmware on both Windows and Mac. It was made for updating USB keyboards but works well with WARBL. It should be more reliable than the old Hex Uploader app, though if you've successfully used that in the past you can still use it. I've made a video (below) about how to do the update process using QMK Toolbox. I've also updated the User Manual with instructions for both Windows and Mac.

https://youtu.be/EZlVC2u9PRs

[ralphsilat]

Hi Andrew.

Followed the instructions in the video and ran into a problem after selecting Auto Flash. Got this error message in red: '!There are no devices available'. Yup, Warbl was plugged in at this point.

Dunno if it makes a difference but I use Windows 10. Please help

[admin]

I ran into that problem at one point while making the video, and restarting my PC solved the problem. I’m using Windows 10 as well. If that doesn’t work we’ll see what else we can figure out.

[ralphsilat]

I'll try again . Thanks!

[admin]

Sure! Let me know if it still isn’t working.

[ralphsilat]

No luck, Andrew.

I repeated the process from the very beginning (downloading and such) but I got the same error message when I reached that point.

[admin]

Ugh, sorry Ralph. I was reading the QMK documentation last night, and it sounds like it means that there is a driver installed on your machine that is interfering with WARBL. I'm going to read some more now and see if I can find anything.

When you double-click the reset button, does it briefly say "Caterina device connected" in yellow, and then give you the error?

[admin]

Also, when you installed QMK Toolbox the first time, did it ask you if you wanted to install drivers? On Windows 10, there shouldn't be any drivers installed, and I think it may confuse the machine if we let QMK try install drivers.

[admin]

Thinking back, I believe what I did when this happened to me was I uninstalled QMK Toolbox (I was trying to do a fresh install to make the video), restarted my PC, then reinstalled QMK Toolbox. At that point it worked.

If that doesn't work, there are a few options, I see that you were able to do the update last time using the old app, and that's still an option that you could try. Here's the old app: https://warbl.xyz/WARBL_Installer.zip And the old User Manual, with the instructions for that app: https://warbl.xyz/WARBL%20User%20Manual(1.6).pdf

If you'd like to use QMK Toolbox and reinstalling/restarting didn't work, we probably have to figure out which driver WARBL is using, and delete that driver, so Windows will be forced to use the default driver. If you downlaod and run this little utility (Zadig), it will tell you what driver WARBL is using: https://github.com/pbatard/libwdi/relea ... ig-2.5.exe

After you open Zadig, go to the Options menu and select "list all devices". Then double-click the WARBL programming button, and a new device will appear, probably called Adafruit ItsyBitsy. Then you can make a note or take a screenshot of the driver that it is currently using (the one shown on the left). After ten seconds it will disappear, as WARBL goes out of programming mode. The driver should be some version of "usbser". If it's not, you can select "USB Serial (CDC)" on the right, and have it replace the driver. On my machine it takes a minute to replace the driver and then tells me it failed, bit it actually worked. I think it just thinks it fails because WARBL disappears during that time because it exits programming mode.

After all this, you can open QMK Toolbox again, double-click the programming button, and *hopefully* WARBL will appear without the "no devices available" warning.

[ralphsilat]

I'll try these. Fingers crossed

Thanks man!