Boron LED flickering after some time and never wakes up again

Troubleshooting
1

Hi,
since a couple of days I have a strange behavior on my Boron. In the video below, you can see the LED flickering when the device is in sleep mode. It works for some time and when ever this flickering appears the boron will not wake up again.

Link to the video in my GDrive.

This started using the newest Device Firmware.

The device does the following:

  1. Get data from another main board using UART.
  2. Get the location using Google API
  3. Get data from SHT31 board using I2C.
  4. Pack data to json string.
  5. Send data to Particle Cloud.
  6. Sleep for 5 minutes
  7. –> repeat.

I have another device in field which is working since a couple of months without a problem.
However, pressing the reset button at least more than once the device will restart and start doing his job.

Has anyone observed any similar behavior?

Thanks,
Tim

2

I’d see this as a power issue.
Check the voltage on the 3v3 pin - best with an oscilloscope.

3

The voltage at the 3V3 pin was as expected 3V3.

Sometimes it also happens after flashing locally after switching from DFU to the normal program.
Also the battery is connected and some cases also the USB Cable.

Do you have another idea?

4

I have very recently had this exact same problem on 1.4.0 and it has turned out to be another Particle software related absolute time-consumptive disaster for me. Seeing this thread has given me reassurance of my sanity to know it is not just me.

I took a video of it and confirmed it seemed to be associated with one certain Boron (1.4.0) whereas it is not happening on the 1.3.1-rc1 I have out in the field.

Particle needs to devote full time and attention to this thread because people will not have as much love and patience as I have had when Particle puts out updates that destroy the Boron’s ability to be used in an actual 24/7/365 remote industrial environment (in my case, three hour drive both ways) and not just some flashy toy for barely-teenage girls to play with once or twice when they are bored.

I credit Particle for fixing the even more disastrous and problematic cellular-reconnect-failure memory leak issue.

It is very angering that, right when they fixed that, another end-all-be-all disaster issue popped-up, this time appearing to have to do with the power supply.

This was on 1.4.0, as I assume, correct?

Did you recently update right before getting this issue?

Particle has had great support in the past to make up for their confusing failures and we are definitely again in need of another bout of honorable customer support attention from Particle regarding the complete incapacitation of their flagship product in the newest software update thereof.

2 Likes
5

Yes exactly. It started after using 1.4.0. Now I went back to 1.3.1. I already spent enough time trying to fix this on my end with no luck. This problem also appears on all Borons I tested whenever I use 1.4.0 as deviceOS…

1 Like
6

Hi @T1mS, thanks for reporting this issue. I’ve requested access to the GDrive link.

Given that this occurred after a local flash in at least one instance - do you see any resemblance between this issue and that reported here: Workbench Local Flash occasionally requires hard reset? ?

7

@avtolstoy - would you mind looking into this as well?

@T1mS, can you make this video publicly available?

8

This definitely sounds like the issue we've identified. See Workbench Local Flash occasionally requires hard reset? - #6 by avtolstoy as well. We are releasing new DeviceOS version with the fix this week.

If the sleep is SLEEP_MODE_DEEP, this is also the effect of the aformentioned issue, otherwise might be an indication of some kind of a different thing.

1 Like
9

Hi @marekparticle Marek,

you can access the video now. :slight_smile:

@avtolstoy
this sounds like the same issue. I don’t use SLEEP_MODE_DEEP because I want to use the timer to wake the device after 5 minutes.

Looking forward to the new deviceOS to see if it is fixed.

Thanks,
Tim

10

@T1mS Just wanted to follow up that DeviceOS 1.4.2 release is out and should resolve the flickering (boot/crash-loop) issue, however flickering after waking up from STOP sleep mode has to be caused by something else. I would appreciate if you could provide some minimal application for us to reproduce. Thanks!

11

Hey @avtolstoy,

just want to let you know, after some days of testing the 1.4.2 release the bug did not appear.

Thanks for the update. :ok_hand: