Raspberry Pi down!


 

RWilloughby

TVWBB Member
I smoked a shoulder over the weekend and sadly wasn't able to use my heatermeter via my phone (my lcd display on the heatermeter died long ago so thats the only way I can control it). I ended up taking it apart to see what was going on and came across my raspberry pi looking worse for the wear.

When I removed the SD card, the middle metal tong in the reader came with it. So looks like my pi died...

So, question is, should I find a replacement pi? Or should I just move on? I'm currently on a v4.2.4 board. With my on board display dead, i'm leaning to just starting over. I could stick with the 4.2 build and keep my case and just find a compatible pi, or I could start all over with the 4.3. Thoughts?

Next question is any idea what could have caused this?

20200524_105110.jpg20200524_105201.jpg
 
Looks like you've got quite a bit of corrosion on the SD card and the RasPi. How does the HM board look?

If the HM board is ok, you could pop in a Pi Zero W and keep going. I do all my control remotely have have no use for the LCD or buzzer. I built a waterproof setup for mine.
 
I went the Pi Zero W route, downloaded the code for this Pi. I'm using the first 26 pins starting on the SD card end. It sits on my HM 4.2 with the fruit logo up. When powered on, I never see it connect to my network (remember LCD panel is dead). I've looked at the config file to make sure all my wifi is setup correctly. I don't have a mini hd plug adapter so I can't plug it in and see whats going on. Is there any other way I can test this? If not, i'll get an hdmi adapter.

Well, this is crazy. Just plugged it in and let it sit after lunch and now its connected to the network! Time to get it configured again!
 
Last edited:
So while its up, i'm running into a AVR fuse error when trying to update the firmware. So looking through the forum I ran this:

root@LEDE:~# insmod spi-bcm2835
root@LEDE:~# hmdude -v -v -v -v -b 128 -P/dev/spidev0.0
hmdude: compiled on Oct 12 2017 at 13:13:56
Using port: /dev/spidev0.0
SPI speed: 128 KHz
spi(ac, 53, 00, 00) = 00 00 00 00
Can't set AVR programming mode (0x00)

What else can I run?
 
Possibilities:
1- The traces on the board between the RasPi and ATMEGA328 are damaged ( multimeter to test traces )
2- The ATMEGA328 chip is bad ( Try with a different ATMEGA328 )
3- The SPI bus on the RasPi is bad ( Try with a different RasPi )
 
Thanks Steve. Hope its not the new Pi Zero W I just got! I'll do the trace and go from there. I don't have an extra chip, so that is off table.
 
I haven't found anything glaring with my current board, so throwing in the towel with it. I was looking at the assembled kits and noticed that the 4.2.4 board description only says Raspberry Pi (Model A or B (original), Raspberry Pi Zero , whereas the 4.3 board says Raspberry Pi (Zero, Zero W, A+, B+, 2 B, 3 B). So could that be my problem? I'm using a Zero W on my 4.2.4 board?
 
Ok, I have a new 4.2.4 board, LCD shows no pit probe, and can go through settings. So all good there, minus no wifi. I have the latest snapshot on a microsd card for the pie zero w and can boot up and connect to the home network fine. So Zero is good by itself.

The issue comes when I attach the Pi to the HM board, connect to the network, go into the configuration, it says no heatermeter board attached. The Pi is connected with the sd card slot towards the probe end. I tried to flash the AVR firmware to see if that would do anything... that gave me an AVR error.

Ideas?
 
Thanks Steve. Ok, found those pads. All I have is a multimeter. Being I've not heard of bouncing voltage before, please provide guidance on this. Do I simply use my multimeter and put a prob on each pad and see if it bounces back and forth?
 
Put a probe on GND and probe on TX and you should see the numbers rising and falling between 0 and 3.3v. You want to select DC (⎓ symbol) and the voltage level greater than 3.3 ( 20v seems to be a common option)
 
Ok, tests completed using my multimeter set to DCV 10:

Test 1 - (no RasPi attached) I saw a very slight movement on TX & GND. It was almost like a heartbeat.

Test 2 - (with RasPi attached), nothing registered when I touched the RX & GND .
 
The heartbeat on the TX is good. This shows the ATMEGA is sending data. I'm not 100% sure if you should be seeing the same thing on the RX pad with the RasPi attached. Maybe the RasPi only transmits data to the HM when it's making a config change.

Try ssh'ing into the RasPi and running "cat /dev/ttyAMA0" to see if the Pi shows the data being sent over the serial port.

Does the hmdude command from your previous post work with the new Pi and the new board?
 
Last edited:
Thanks Steve,

I ran the cat command and nothing was returned so broke out of it.

When I ran the hmdude command I had the same results as before - ' Can't set AVR programming mode (0x00) '

When I soldered the pins on, could I have messed something up there? Should I reflow my connections on RasPi?
 
I just fired up my HM and I also didn't get anything on /dev/ttyAMA0 but I do get data when I run "cat /dev/ttyS0" so see if that reports anything.
 
Is it possible you're not connecting the RasPi to the HM board properly? Maybe post a a pic showing them connected together.
 

 

Back
Top