Support request guidance

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Talk about Adafruit Raspberry Pi® accessories! Please do not ask for Linux support, this is for Adafruit products only! For Raspberry Pi help please visit: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/
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Rascal
 
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Support request guidance

Post by Rascal »

Hello.

I emailed Adafruit a support request a dead Raspberry Pi. The canned email response directed me to post in "the appropriate forum." The Pi is dead after about two months of working perfectly.

Will someone please tell me which forum is the appropriate one to post a support request for a dead Raspberry Pi?

Thank you.

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by Franklin97355 »

I'll move it for you. Could you post clear pictures of your board and the connections to it? Also explain what is happening when it failed and what it is and isn't doing. You could also include what you have done to troubleshoot the problem.

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Our replacement warranty on Raspberry Pi's is 30 days.

How do you know it's dead? Have you gone through the R Pi troubleshooting pages:
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting

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Rascal
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by Rascal »

Thank you for the response. Pictures are attached, although I was only allowed to post three.

The board simply stopped booting. In short, this is my first Pi and I was using it as an Onion Pi; very cool project. Connected to the Pi were a standard Cat6e cable to the router, a WiFi module, an HDMI cable to a monitor (when needed), an SDcard, and a USB power cable plugged in to a powered USB hub. The SDcard was a 16GB PNY Class 10. The OS was Raspbian, all per the tutorial.

Everything was working perfectly, with the minor exception of the WiFi module dropping every few days. Restarting DHCP or reassigning the static IP address usually resolved that. When it didn't a reboot did.

Then one day I was SSHed in to the Pi and I received a permissions error when attempting to modify a text file. Unfortunately I don't have the exact error, nor can I find it in my history or SSH log. The Pi and OS were both still functioning so I rebooted. After that, nothing.

Now, when I power the Pi, nothing happens except the red power LED illuminates. If I plug a monitor in it displays nothing and stays in sleep mode.

To troubleshoot the problem I have removed all externally attached devices such as the WiFi dongle and network cable, tried rebooting several times with and without the SDcard plugged in, blown it off with canned air, and waived some chicken bones at it. Nothing.

Thanks for any help or suggestions you may have.
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Rascal
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by Rascal »

More information:

The red power LED shines brightly, but no others do. I have reseated the SDcard several times with no change. When I attach the same SDcard to my Ubuntu laptop it displays the directory structures and I am able to read and write to it.

I can see bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, start.elf, etc.

I will zero out the SSDcard again and reload the image again, but I have already done this previously.

There is no flashing of an OK light for 20 seconds at any point in the troubleshooting process.

The USB cable and hub that the Pi is connected to have remained the same for the life of the Pi. Attached is a picture of the Pi connected to the power source with a power detector inline.
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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Try a different USB cable.
If you have a multimeter, check out the voltage on the PI itself:
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... r_problems

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Rascal
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by Rascal »

OK - tried a different USB cable, but first I took voltage measurements.

Between TP1 and TP2 with the original cable the voltage was 5.11 and steady. Between TP2 and both sides of the polyfuse, the reading was 5.12 steady. With the new cable the voltage was also 5.12 steady across all points. Unfortunately the new cable produced no change in the Pi's behavior.
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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Other than flashing a new SD card, I'm out of ideas.

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Rascal
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by Rascal »

OK. I have zeroed out the SDcard and reimaged it with the known-good Raspbian image and the Pi is still exhibiting the same behavior.

Since everything checks out and the Pi is still not working is it safe to assume that it's a dead Pi?

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

That does sound dead, yeah.

As one last item for the morbid-curiosity file, what voltage do you get on the 3.3v GPIO pin? The microprocessor runs from the 3.3v rail, and there's a faint chance the regulator failed.

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Rascal
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by Rascal »

3.31 steady.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Support request guidance

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Well, that isn't it.

As Rick said earlier, our standard replace/return period is 30 days, but this is an early failure for a RasPi that doesn't show any symptoms of the usual ways of killing one.

Send a note to [email protected] with a link to this thread and the folks there will work out a discount on a replacement.

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