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RAsynboard stopped working

balajivan1995

Long story short, I was road-testing the RAsynboard and I wanted to create an activity tracker using the IMU sensor present in it. Due to the delicate nature of the board (two tiny jumpers wires on core board already started peeling away), I made sure I handled it with proper care. I strapped the board powered by a small 3.7v battery to my arm to collect data in SD card to create ML model. I am not sure, but I think due to sweat the board got shorted somewhere and stopped working. It blinks in red color for a few milli second and stops. I used prebuilt binaries for generating raw sensor values, nothing fancy. Now I can't even program it further (Created new project configuration in Renesas Programmer as well as suggested in guide). 

Since there is a dedicated forum for RAsynboard, I have decided to ask for help here. Any suggestions will be helpful. I am will gladly provide additional details if needed for clarification.

  • 0

    Sorry to hear that your board is not working.  I've not seen this issue before.  

    • Does your PC recognize the Renesas Debugger hardware if your remove the J3 jumper and connect your USB-C cable to the I/O board?  

    image

    Does the core board operate when separated from the I/O board? If you have an application loaded and you had flashed the models to the SPI Flash (user button > 3 seconds), the small LED between the battery connector and the USB-C connector will double flash if the application detects an inference event from the NDP120.

    • Detach the I/O board and power the core board using the USB-C connector on the core board
    • Do you see any debug from the COM port associated with the connection?
    • Maybe a better question is does the COM port associated with the USB-C connector on the core board enumerate on your PC?

    Brian

  • 0

    From the video plus your comments it appears that the small (1.27mm pitch) SMT 2-pin header (J5) on the core board has broken-off? This damage to the PCB has likely compromised the integrity of the Boot-Selection circuit which relies on tiny R17 and R48 resistors 
    image image

  • 0 in reply to peterfenn

    Yes, the J5 connector was broken when I tried to strap the kit to my arm, the thin wire was actually peeling off from the solder pad. J5 connector needs to be bridged when the core board alone needs to be working. When connected with IO board, J5 jumper should be disconnected. Since I was experimenting with config files in SD card mostly, I kept IO board and core board paired always. It was working fine without the J5 jumper bridged. To avoid J5 connector wires shorting with other components I removed them from the pad.

    I think you could be right, when I removed the pins from the pad, I should have coated the exposed area with insulating material. Currently I am out of town, and I don't have the kit with me. I will resolder the J5 jumper and try to run the application without IO board. Hopefully I could verify the integrity of core board..

  • 0 in reply to bwilless

    I mostly followed the test plan provided in the OOB repo along with the tutorials made by you on Hackster, which honestly was very helpful to start developing application. I flashed the models to memory only one time and the core board was working well separately then. Considering how brittle the connectors between IO board and core board, I never separated the boards again.

    1. Debugger Unit is showing up in device manager.

    2. I have flashed the OOB application, with "BLE_Enabled=1" & "button_shift=imu" enabled in config

    3. Usually I enable the write to option in config file and a drive will appear in windows file manager when connected via USB cable. But it is not appearing now, and I don't see any data coming from USB port either.

    Considering Peter's suggestion below and yours, I will try to run the core board as a standalone module by resoldering the J5 jumper and check whether it is working.

  • 0 in reply to bwilless

    Hi, I tried Peter's suggestion and soldered the J5 connectors. 

    1. Yes, I have detached the core board and powered via USB-C cable, green LED is ON. But the board is not working.

    2. No, there was no debug messages from the COM port.

    3. No, COM port did not appear in device manager at all.

  • 0 in reply to peterfenn

    Hi, I have soldered the J5 and connected the jumpers, took core board out of IO board. Powered the core board using external supply. Green LED indication is working, but the core board is not working. Is there anything else I can do?

  • 0 in reply to balajivan1995

    With the jumper in place on J5 of Core board, do you hear/see the interface enumerate when you connect USB cable from Core board to your PC?

  • 0 in reply to peterfenn

    No, the COM port did not appear at all. I have tested with another laptop as well. 

  • 0 in reply to balajivan1995

    Make sure the USB-C cable includes data interface (ie. not just a charging cable)
    Make sure you have installed the Renesas Flash Programmer on your development PC 

  • 0 in reply to peterfenn

    At this stage I suspect that something is unresolved from the PCB jumper damage and/or the relevant MCU IOs may have sustained some damage...