New HeaterMeter "not communicating"


 
P

PeteW

New member
Hi,

Myself and a friend built HeaterMeters the other night. As far as I'm aware we both did the exact same thing - except his works and mine doesn't!

It works independently - the screen reads the pit temp and the blower comes on, it's just the network side of thing that's not behaving.

When I go to http://heatermeter.com/devices/ I see it listed but the 'Available' column says "HeaterMeter not communicating".
When I click through to its IP address, the interface loads but it shows '--' in place of the pit temperature.
If I look at the logs it says "No response from HeaterMeter, running avrupdate"

If I swap my HM for my friend's but keep everything else the same (same Pi, same SD card, same network, etc) - it works fine, the problem is specific to my board.

It's a v4.2.4 with a Raspberry Pi Model B - I've uploaded photos of both sides here: http://imgur.com/a/0G9vA

Any suggestions of where to start debugging..?

Many thanks

Pete
 
If it can't communicate with the HM, the most probable cause is no 3.3v signal to the ATMEGA chip. This is often due to a BS170 being soldered into IC4 since the 4 x BS170 and 1 x MCP1700-33 components look almost identical.

Can visually verify the MCP1700 is installed in IC4?

This might also help:

ag0eJOz.png
 
I would remove the rPi and the ATMega from their sockets and reflow the solder on the ATMega socket and the rPi connector, then reinstall and try again...
 
Look closely at the flat side of the transistor/voltage regulator, you should see the part number printed on it.... might need a magnifying glass to see, depending on your vision. That said, the ATMega runs on 3.3v, so if your HM powers up and seems to work then your 3.3v regulator is probably good.
 
So I've not had a chance to resolder the connectors yet as I need to go back to see my friend who has the soldering iron...

However I've just set mine up standalone, without the Raspberry Pi, to try it out and I've noticed another problem.

When I connect it to a hot pit, it reads the temperature which seems OK, and as it's above the target temp the fan speed reads 0% - but I can see the fan is blowing!
When I swap out the board for my friend's HM, the reading is the same but his is behaving correctly - the fan doesn't blow.

This is all with the same blower, cable, connector, etc - just swapping out the HM.

Any suggestions what is causing this? Could it be connected to the above issue?

Thanks for your help.
 
There are a handful of things that could cause the fan to blow when it shouldn't...
First is you have something wrong in the blower feedback circuit. To test this you need can change the fan from Voltage mode to Pulse mode and see if she behaves better, but you need your HM to communicate with your rPi to get to the config page.
You could also have something wrong in the blower circuit itself, bad/misplaced component, solder bridge or bad solder connection etc. You can check this stuff visibly so this is something you can look into now.
Finally, you could have a bad flash on your ATMega, which can happen if your soldering on it's socket is flaky. After you re-flow the solder on your ATMega and rPi sockets you can re-flash the ATMega to make sure this isn't the issue.
Unfortunately all three of these possible causes require you to have a soldering iron to troubleshoot ultimately...
 
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