Dusty Hicks
New member
Hi, Its my first time using a HM. I got the 4.3 - four-thermistor kit and I'm using a 3B+ RPi to run it. I finished all the soldering last night, which i thought went well. I mounted the image onto my MicroSD card from the heatermeter.com/dl site, i put the SD card into the rasberry pi and tried to boot it up. Nothing happens. There is only a single row of dark cells (i can adjust their darkness with the contrast controller, but i'm confused why only one row lights up, i'm wondering if that is indicative of a soldering issue or something). Also, when i plug my Raspberry pi into my TV and watch it when i try to boot it up, it only shows a sort of rainbow pixel screen and that is it. Lastly, the RPi only shows a beeping red light when i try (and fail) to boot it up, I'm not sure if that is helpful information or not.
I tried going to the troubleshooting page, but honestly I don't even know how to follow those instructions. The first on that list:
-Start by ensuring you can connect to openwrt on your Raspberry Pi see [HeaterMeter 4.x Software](HeaterMeter 4.x Software#configuration).
1. I have no idea how to connect to openwrt on my Raspberry Pi, and i wasn't able to figure it out using Google. I've done raspberry pi projects in the past so im loosely familar with the software side but I'm by no means and expert. Am i supposed to install Raspian on this first to somehow troubleshoot the issues, or to access Openwrt?
2. I do not know how to tell the difference between a hardware issue and a software issue. I don't know if it isn't booting because i soldering something wrong, or because I did something wrong on the software side and i was hoping someone could help me figure it out. I really feel like I did a great job on the soldering, I'm really good with my hands (I do dentistry every day and I have to do things on a small scale all the time). I made sure every solder joint flowed through to the other side and I was super careful about polarity with the components that mattered.
Lastly, as a separate question, from the assembly video, i got the impression that when i solder in the four thermistor jacks, i only need the five 10K resistors (four next to the jacks and one other 10K resistor on the side) and i don't need to use the 100K resistor at all, but i thought I read somewhere on here that on the pit probe (thermistor version), you need to install BOTH the 10K and 100K resistors right next to each other. Does this seem right? It seemed from the assembly video that you are supposed to leave the 100K resistor out altogether, at least right next to the thermistor jack.
Thank you for the help!
I tried going to the troubleshooting page, but honestly I don't even know how to follow those instructions. The first on that list:
-Start by ensuring you can connect to openwrt on your Raspberry Pi see [HeaterMeter 4.x Software](HeaterMeter 4.x Software#configuration).
1. I have no idea how to connect to openwrt on my Raspberry Pi, and i wasn't able to figure it out using Google. I've done raspberry pi projects in the past so im loosely familar with the software side but I'm by no means and expert. Am i supposed to install Raspian on this first to somehow troubleshoot the issues, or to access Openwrt?
2. I do not know how to tell the difference between a hardware issue and a software issue. I don't know if it isn't booting because i soldering something wrong, or because I did something wrong on the software side and i was hoping someone could help me figure it out. I really feel like I did a great job on the soldering, I'm really good with my hands (I do dentistry every day and I have to do things on a small scale all the time). I made sure every solder joint flowed through to the other side and I was super careful about polarity with the components that mattered.
Lastly, as a separate question, from the assembly video, i got the impression that when i solder in the four thermistor jacks, i only need the five 10K resistors (four next to the jacks and one other 10K resistor on the side) and i don't need to use the 100K resistor at all, but i thought I read somewhere on here that on the pit probe (thermistor version), you need to install BOTH the 10K and 100K resistors right next to each other. Does this seem right? It seemed from the assembly video that you are supposed to leave the 100K resistor out altogether, at least right next to the thermistor jack.
Thank you for the help!