Warm CHIP won't (re)boot and hangs intermittently

Othernet Hardware
1

I’ve been having problems with the CHIP since I received the receiver kit. The CHIP ends up in a non bootable state after being powered on for a few days. So far I have experienced this 3 times. Removing the power for a few minutes does not enable the board to boot up. Only keeping the power removed for 60+ minutes and then repowering the board has allowed the board to boot up.

Also removing and reapplying the power or issuing reboot command to the CHIP will cause this boot issue if the board is warm.

—> CHIP gets somewhat faulty whe it’s warm?? Any input on this behaviour? This unreliability makes the whole thing not worth the effort for me.

The data is streaming in reliably with 4-6 dB of SNR from the 25E satellite with 1 or 2 uncorrectable packets/day. The antenna is on a window sill and the LNA+radio+CHIP are located under the window out of reach from direct sunlight. The power is supplied to the system by a quality 1.8A PSU, using a 3.4A PSU did not eliminate the hangs.

2

This is unusual.

How much is your ambient temperature? Is there enough air movement around the CHIP?

Generally if it were a heat-related shutdown, it should not take days to show up, so its possible something else is going on.

3

Let me know if it seems like a defective CHIP.

4

The ambient temperature inside fluctuates around 21-18 °C. A few weeks back the temperature has been a few degrees higher inside (23-21 °C). The CHIP lays on a non heated wooden floor.

This time I had to cool the board down outside (+2 °C) to get it to boot on Friday afternoon Dec 23th. Since then it has not yet crashed (status as of evening 27th), I can make some experiments with the C.H.I.P. if needed. Before taking the board outside to cool down the board just exhibited 1 bright and 1 dim led, the other led did not start to blink. Same symptoms as with the “too hot” related crash. After cooling the board outside and plugging it in inside the led started to blink before starting to glow continuously.

5

Do you have an external power supply that you could try powering up from the header instead of the usb?

-C

6

I had some issues with Librarian freezing up and had to reboot. Usually after a week or so. I noticed the CHIP pcb was running fairly hot. The RTL-SDR generates heat that is transferred down the USB connector. I put a 6 inch USB cable between the SDR and the CHIP. The CHIP now runs a lot cooler. i just re flashed the chip to the new OS so not sure the freezing is gone as the librarian is gone. Will find out a few days into the new OS