# Why won't my computer talk to my Altus Metrum product?

Make sure you have a battery and power switch attached, and when you turn
on the power switch, the board beeps at you.  If not, resolve that 
first.  Note that some products like TeleGPS don't have a beeper, or need
a switch attached, but you always need a battery attached to power up the
board... a USB cable alone is not sufficient!

You need to have our software installed, you can find the 
[free download here](../AltOS).

Plug a USB cable into the board and your computer.

The next step is to get the board into the right mode.  For flight computers 
with an accelerometer, you need to power up the board in a not-nose-up 
orientation.  For products like EasyMini that do not have an accelerometer, 
you need to have the USB cable attached to the board at power up to let it 
know you want to talk to it from your computer instead of going in to pad 
mode.  

Your computer should "see" the board once it powers up and beeps out the
battery voltage and then two "dits" (Morse code I) indicating that it's
entering idle/interactive mode, followed by the pyro continuity beeps
one time only.  At that point, you should be able to configure it from our 
software, etc.  If, instead, you hear 'di dah dah dit' (Morse code P) and 
the continuity beeps repeat every few seconds, the board is in pad mode and
you won't be able to talk to it.

By FAR the biggest problem we see are folks trying to use micro USB
cables that don't have all the pins connected.  Apparently, lots of
cables shipped these days for battery charging only have the power and
ground pins and just can't be used for actual USB data transfer.  We
[sell a cable](https://shop.gag.com/parts/usb-a-to-micro-b-cable.html)
that we know works if you can't find one locally.

Don't be afraid to try several USB cables until you find one that works!