Rfm69pi v3.1 DOA ? no minicom response, no LED

emonwok · 2016-06-20T09:46:32.383Z

UPDATE: openenergymonitor provided fast support and shipped a working replacement part.

Hi, I’ve just received a new rfm69pi v3.1 (and a couple of emonTX V3’s ) and have spent the best part of a day trying to get something working, to no avail.

The first few times I powered up the raspberri pi (2B running raspbian wheezy) , the LED on the board turned solid red after a while. After solving permission issues and disabling kernel console and inittab console on ttyAMA0, i’m still getting “Device communication error - check settings” from emonhub.log

-I’ve tried 9600, 38400 and 57600 baud (powercycling between every attempt)
-I’ve tried stopping emonhub and using minicom with all baud rates - result: no data whatsoever after “Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys”, and no response to any commands
-I’ve tried 2 different Raspberry Pi 2 boards
-I’ve tried using emonSD-17Jun2015.img (same result: no response in minicom, emonhub has error as above)
-I’ve tried a really beefy USB power supply, and removing the wifi dongle, in case of power issues
-I’ve insulated the antenna solder point from the GPIO headers on the pi so it doesnt short.
-I’ve tried reflashing the firmware via the PI (results in a whole heap of avrdude-original: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding. avrdude-original: stk500_getsync() attempt 2 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00)

So, after a frustrating day of no results, is it safe to assume this module is dead?
If anyone has any ideas, i’d be super keen to hear them!

Regards

glyn.hudson · 2016-06-20T13:23:29.019Z

Hi Rob, very sorry for the hassle. It does indeed sounds like a hardware fault. Thanks a lot for posting your comprehensive testing. We will send you a replacement today. This replacement has been tested to be functional.

emonwok · 2016-06-21T01:59:46.548Z

Thanks for the fast response Glyn. Looking forward to a successful result!

emonwok · 2016-07-06T04:58:29.097Z

Hi, package received, I plugged it in and it worked immediately.

Can you comment on the most likely cause of the DOA part; in particular - can you provide future buyers any confidence that your QA process is improving?

Thanks again for the excellent support and fast turnaround.