Board failing to boot when powering up under certain conditions

[sjwilks]

I have an issue with the PX4 not booting when applying power to the quadcopter in either the form of a 3S Lipo or a lab power supply @ 11.1V.

When applying power, the PX4's green LED is on immediately and all other LEDs are off (and never flash during power on). If I press the reset button it boots fine. Alternately, after connecting power, I can unplug the PX4 from the CC BEC (5.1V) during power up and connect it afterwards and everything works fine. Powering via USB works fine.

My wiring works as follows:

Lipo (3S) -> Powerboard -> DJI ESCs Lipo (3S) -> Powerboard -> CC BEC (5.1V) -> GR-16 Receiver -> PX4 via 5VDD on multiport.

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Mike's Response:

This is not expected behaviour; the board should reset cleanly regardless of the power source. It sounds like there might be some glitching or other noise on the rail that is causing the PX4FMU to not boot correctly. If you have a scope and you can watch the VDD3v3 rail you might be able to catch this, but it may be tricky.

If you repeat your unplug/replug test but disconnect the BEC from the powerboard (i.e. so you are re-powering the BEC) which result do you get? Which CC BEC are you using?

Can you repeat the test with the ESC's out of the circuit? I realise that if you're using the DJI setup chances are that they're all soldered in, but if you can just power the BEC/receiver/FMU setup from your bench supply that would be a good start.

One more test; while the board is in the green LED only state, if you connect USB, what happens? In particular does the board boot? If not, do you see the ST bootloader on the USB bus, or is it totally silent?

Apologies for the problem; any information you can provide here may help us narrow down the issue, and I will try to reproduce your setup here as well.

[sjwilks]

I tried powering the board directly from a lab power supply (5V) to the multiports 5VDD and GND. When I switch the power on using the lab units power switch it fails to boot. If I power on the lab unit and then connect the alligator clip to the 5VDD wire then it boots fine.

I have the same effect when the board is mounted in the quadcopter and the lipo is plugged into the power distribution board.

The BEC is a Castle Creations 10A BEC. Plugging in USB after failure to boot doesn't do anything, though I haven't checked for ST bootloader presence on the USB bus yet.

[px4dev]

Simon,

Can you pull the most recent firmware and run 'bl_update setopt', then see if this problem persists?

I'd like to see if enabling the brown-out reset circuit helps with your symptoms.

On Aug 29, 2012, at 10:27 PM, sjwilks wrote:

I tried powering the board directly from a lab power supply (5V) to the multiports 5VDD and GND. When I switch the power on using the lab units power switch it fails to boot. If I power on the lab unit and then connect the alligator clip to the 5VDD wire then it boots fine.

I have the same effect when the board is mounted in the quadcopter and the lipo is plugged into the power distribution board.

The BEC is a Castle Creations 10A BEC. Plugging in USB after failure to boot doesn't do anything, though I haven't checked for ST bootloader presence on the USB bus yet.

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px4@purgatory.org

[sjwilks]

Thanks for looking into this. I will give it a try tomorrow and let you know how it looks.

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 8:19 PM, px4dev notifications@github.com wrote:

Simon,

Can you pull the most recent firmware and run 'bl_update setopt', then see if this problem persists?

I'd like to see if enabling the brown-out reset circuit helps with your symptoms.

On Aug 29, 2012, at 10:27 PM, sjwilks wrote:

I tried powering the board directly from a lab power supply (5V) to the multiports 5VDD and GND. When I switch the power on using the lab units power switch it fails to boot. If I power on the lab unit and then connect the alligator clip to the 5VDD wire then it boots fine.

I have the same effect when the board is mounted in the quadcopter and the lipo is plugged into the power distribution board.

The BEC is a Castle Creations 10A BEC. Plugging in USB after failure to boot doesn't do anything, though I haven't checked for ST bootloader presence on the USB bus yet.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

px4@purgatory.org

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/PX4/Hardware/issues/3#issuecomment-9210631.

[sjwilks]

I just updated to the latest firmware and ran the command. Here is the output just to verify:

nsh> bl_update setopt bl_update: option bits set nsh>

I removed the USB cable and then connected the power supply but it still only activates the green LED only.

I am not using the latest bootloader in case that matters, just the one preinstalled on the 1.6 board (Ver 2).

[px4dev]

Simon,

Thanks. Looks like we need to dig deeper.

On Oct 9, 2012, at 11:32 AM, sjwilks wrote:

I just updated to the latest firmware and ran the command. Here is the output just to verify:

nsh> bl_update setopt bl_update: option bits set nsh>

I removed the USB cable and then connected the power supply but it still only activates the green LED only.

I am not using the latest bootloader in case that matters, just the one preinstalled on the 1.6 board (Ver 2).

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

px4@purgatory.org

[johnm1]

My px4fmu faults on poweron when connected to castle bec and lipo is connected. I have to connect lipo to the bec and then connect bec to px4. I will have to put in a power switch to power up after the battery is connected .