System Blue unit appears deaf station 2831 - SOLVED

[jonfear]

Edit 3: Looking closer at what the debug messages were telling me, it became clear that the H field was missing any data. Out to the outdoor box with the H field antennas and look at the status LED which is off more than on. A quick wiggle of the lan cable indicated a dry joint. Back into the workshop and a quick joint refresh with normal leaded solder and hey presto all working again.

Moral, do not trust lead free solder. PPS (P*ss Poor Soldering) and lead free do not mix. As an electronics professional, I am really quite annoyed with myself, I have never knowingly had a dry joint. Oh well I guess there is always a first time...

Edit 2: Not working. Looks like something is still not happy. Still getting ADC errors...

Edit 1. Look at the input voltage. Clearly this device requires more than the POE converter can provide. The supply voltage was circa 3.84v. Now plugged into a PI USB2 port and voltage is up to 4.2v and the device appears to be much happier...

However that was still not enough. Now powered by a wall wart supply and getting 4.72v+.

So folks the lesson here is to be careful of your volts! Whilst trying to get rid of "wall Warts" to save power, make sure your proposed solution is up to the task!

Jon 

Hi Folks

Just noticed that my system was not picking up much of the storms across eastern Europe.

It looks like it has gone deaf. Carried out a reboot but not much happening. 

Power LED on, Network LED on and GPS LED Flashing, that's about it.

Looking at the data received it appears something changed around 20 July. No local power disturbances or storms, Unit is fed from a POE switch via an adaptor and the whole lot is on a UPS... 

Are there any bits of advice as to what I can do to diagnose what is going on?

Nothing showing in the debug log unless GPS and Web are selected...

Additional: Some info the the debug log, I do not think it makes good reading...

Any help gratefully.... 

Thanks

Jon

[hazelnut]

Edit 1. Look at the input voltage. Clearly this device requires more than the POE converter can provide. The supply voltage was circa 3.84v. Now plugged into a PI USB2 port and voltage is up to 4.2v and the device appears to be much happier...

However that was still not enough. Now powered by a wall wart supply and getting 4.72v+.

Another thing to be aware of is that many USB cables are absolute rubbish and will cause a considerable voltage drop, especially at higher currents.  There's a guy somewhere who has posted a table of test results with different USB cables and some can't even carry 100mA without dropping outside the USB voltage spec, there was one that he described as "a long thin resistor" rather than a cable.  So your problem in this case may not be the power supply but the cable leading from it.