First cook was a success - but WiFi stopped working after

After a long, difficult build and a rescue from RalphTrimble, I managed to run through my first HM cook tonight. We did a pork tenderloin.

The RD3 was attached to my Kamado Joe Classic with a piece of cardboard, so not the most stable cook.

[/url]PorkTenderloin[/IMG]

After I powered down, I decided to try to set up PushBullet. I plugged in the HM and couldn't reach if via WiFi. I noticed the light wasn't blinking on my Edimax adapter. I've tried powering down, reseating the Edimax, using the other USB port... nothing helps.

The Edimax lights up when connected to my laptop.

I also tried connecting the HM (via the rPi Ethernet) to my router and I can't see it when it is wired, either.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Make sure your SD card is seated, the rPi is seated, run the HM in your case so the boards dont wiggle around. Sounds like linkmeter isn't booting up properly.

BTW, that looks like a stellar result for your first cook....

Reseated SD card. Reseated rPi. Left everything in the case with the back attached. Left everything in the case with no back. Still no wireless or wired connection.

I really don't know what to say to you at this point. I had everything setup and tested fully, both HM boards with your rPi and SD card, I put them through the paces for long periods with no issues. You re-imaged the SD card right away when you got the boards back, and now the network is hosed up. I would suggest you go back and re-image your sd card again and walk through the steps you did to make it work the first time... As for PushBullet, that is new, like really new.. so maybe dial it back and get a grip on the basic functions before you go digging into the extended features...

BTW, if you moved your rPi to your other HM board you may have caused yourself a problem after the HM board restores the backup of settings it has in memory, which wont match what you just setup... so your network will be hosed again. You can try using the button on the HM to navigate the menu to RESET SETTINGS and apply... Then try to connect with your wireless device and setup from there.

Yeah, I don't know what to say, either.

My flashing the SD didn't cause this issue as I was connected to my network through multiple reboots this afternoon, then for my stable cook.

As far as PushBullet, I was looking for a way to get alerts to my phone - using a thread that was started back in January. It certainly didn't break anything, either - so far, the only thing I have done is read the thread. I wasn't able to even try to set it up since I was unable to log into the HM to try it.

I'll see if I can start over tomorrow.

plug the HDMI from the rPi into a monitor of some sort to see what is going on there..

This thing is AFU.

No HDMI output from the rPi either when mated to the HM or not.

With no pit probe in, it shows 42-degrees on the pit probe. When I plug in a probe, it jumps to 600-degrees.

I tried reloading the SD, no changes. Still can't get any network connection, wired or wireless.

All I did was cook with the thing once. It's been in the case ever since I did that SD re-load yesterday to get it on my network. It must be me, I must be magnetic or something. I can't seem to stop breaking things. I got my new car stereo installed, that worked fine... for 2 days, now the steering wheel buttons stopped working. Ugh.

I'm truly sorry for your trouble but I have exhausted my efforts here. I fixed your boards and ran them both for days, along with your rPi without issue. I put them through the paces, I moved them around while powered, plugged probes in and out dozens of times, rebooted the rPi dozens of times, ran the rPi on both of your boards, everything was rock solid for me over here.

Your problem with the boards was that you cut the legs off of your components before you put them in the board, and you cut the legs on many components too short to poke through the board and solder to on the other side. I replaced several caps and resistors where the legs were just too short, and reflowed solder to the rest of the board. Perhaps you bent down a component in handling the board and caused the solder connection to go bad, or my guess is you've got all the settings screwed up again and that's why your probes are not reading properly. You had told me via email that the power supply in your computer died and so you do not have a computer to plug into the LAN cable, so I'm not sure exactly how you've remedied that now to say the LAN port is not working? The rPi can be picky about HDMI, in some instance the monitor will remain in sleep mode if you power the rPi with the HDMI connected, and in other instances the monitor will stay in sleep mode unless you boot with the HDMI connected, so try booting the rPi with and without the HDMI plugged in. Try a fresh image of the linkmeter system on the SDCard, try raspian on the HDMI card to verify your rPi is still working. You're gonna have to dig in your heels and figure out this stuff for yourself or maybe sell of your boards and move on....

Go back to basics. Remove the RasPi from the HM board and start from scratch.

Install NOOBS on your SD card and boot up your RasPi connected to a TV/Monitor with an HDMI connection and a wired LAN cable connected. See if that gets you anywhere.

After that, re-install the HeaterMeter OpenWRT image on your SD card and do the same thing, boot it up connected to a TV/Monitor with an HDMI connection and a wired LAN cable connected and see if your RasPi shows up at http://heatermeter.com/devices/

Understood. I don't expect you to be my personal troubleshooter. And I am certainly not blaming you for any of this. I know you had it working. I know that _I_ had it working. I don't know what I could have possibly done to make it stop.

To address some of your comments:
- Settings: I didn't change ANY settings between when I cooked and when I tried to log back into it to try to set up notifications. Nothing changed in the settings. To get it to work in the first place, the only settings I changed were the PID and servo settings. I didn't do anything with the probe settings.

- Physically changes: The only thing that physically changed between the cook and me trying to log back in later was me unplugging the probes, power, and Ethernet from the RD3. I couldn't have bent anything as it was in the case the whole time. I even had the whole thing in a rubbermaid container, so I don't think it got jostled much, if at all. I didn't do anything beyond what would be done in a normal cook.

- Ethernet port: You are correct, I currently don't have a computer that I can change the network settings on. I'm using a work loaner laptop and it is administratively locked. I tried connecting the rPi to my router. The HM/rPi doesn't show up on the Connected Devices page of my router, that's what I mean when I say wired doesn't work

I just loaded raspbian on the SD card and tried booting that way. My router still doesn't see the rPi (not mated to the HM at this point) nor can I get the HDMI to display. I tried 3 TVs here. I'll take the whole deal to work tomorrow and try on my monitor. I'll dig up a different SD card and try that, too.

About the HDMI... My monitor will not power up if I have it plugged into the rPi HDMI when I power the rPi.... if I power the rPi and then plug in the monitor it wakes up and works. Someone else has reported the exact opposite, their monitor will not wake up unless it is plugged into their rPi before it is powered up. So try it both ways....
I am thinking you probably have an issue with your router not allowing the HM to connect though, rather than an issue with the rPi, but I could be wrong. I wrote an image to your SD card, and changed and saved a bunch of settings, a couple times over, the card seemed to be working well... Make sure the Write Protect tab on the card didn't get slid over...... You can certainly try another card though, they can be temperamental at times, and even behave for a while and suddenly become temperamental... so its nice to try another card when possible.
Do you have a lot of static electricity around your place? It seems like a lot of electronics is crapping out on you recently, perhaps you are shocking stuff when you touch it, or you have flaky electricity in your house or something? IDK what else to say with all the stuff you say has been giving up the ghost on you lately....

The raspi doesn't honour the write protect functionality in the SD card. Those pins on the SD card slot aren't connected to anything

The A+ does with the micro SD cards, I know that from experience... Not sure about the physical switch on the full size SD card, I seem to recall that it is ignored now that you mention it. Drawing at straws here because it was working well when it was in my hands...

Update: Got the HM back up and working.

I loaded the SD card (the one that worked for my first cook) with Raspbian and tried connecting to a few HDMI monitors/TVs at work. No HDMI output, and no recognition from the hardwired router (wouldn't see the rPi as a connected device). I loaded NOOBS, same thing.

I got a different SD card and loaded NOOBS. That thing fired right up. HDMI output, the router handed it an IP. I loaded that SD card with the HM load and it fired right up. I was able to log in via wired, configure the wireless, and re-set all of my servo, PID settings, and probe types (this fixed the odd readings on my TC) - no problems at all. I plugged it all in and let it sit for a while, then started unplugging probes, power, fan, etc. No problems. I tried the original SD card with the HM load again, no HDMI output, no wired connection.

I swapped back to the 'new' SD card and it all worked fine. I gave it a quick look this morning and it was still connected wirelessly.

Sees like the rPi stopped getting along with that first SD card. I tried that SD card my camera and laptop and it works fine in both of those.

Now the bad news (you knew there would be some, right?). Ralph, you mentioned the electricity in my house maybe being a problem. I'm not sure that it caused any of the other things to break on me. Really, out of the giant list of things that have broken, only 1 was directly power related (the desktop power supply - but that PC is probably 8 years old, so it could have just been aged out). One other (my work laptop) just came back from Dell and it was a memory issue. Might have been power related. Interestingly, there are 8 people on my team including my boss. We are spread around the country. In the past month, 5 out of 8 have had their laptop crash. We all got them at different times, so they weren't from the same lot. It's very odd. One of the projects I am on has about 20 leads - again, geographically spread out - laptops age from about 1 - 3 years old. Almost half of them have had their laptops die in the last month.

So, I'm not sure power has been an issue... until yesterday. I got home and there had been a lightning storm which we don't get very often at all here. I lost my cable modem, a sound bar, an Apple TV, and a satellite receiver. So add those to the pile of things that have broken for me in the last month. When it rains, it pours.

Anyway, Ralph and Steve - thank you for the help!

Steve - I have a KJ Classic and copied your PID settings as a starting point. I'm also going to follow your Pushbullet lead at some point.

Thanks!

Install the latest snapshot and you'll get a much nicer pushbullet experience!

Glad to hear you have it working again, IDK WHY the SD card is giving your trouble, specially after being written and saved to so many times, but SD Card compatibility seems to be a fairly common issue with the rPi. That's why I was drawing at straws and mentioned the write protect tab, because it sounded like an SD Card issue.
On your Dell laptop experience, I have an explanation for that too... Dell uses cheap electrolytic capacitors in their computers and they tend to vent their smaller computers in a way that makes the caps heat up... So the caps will fail very predictably on computers with about the same amount of use. I used to manage a company that ran about 200 dell Small Form Factor PC's and noticed the same wave of failures you experienced with your laptops. I figured it out after ripping a few of them apart and started re-capping the motherboards myself with better caps when they fail, the units were reliable for a much longer time with the capacitors I selected....