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troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

Work in progress!

The display is not showing anything (in sunlight)

Make sure to cover the chip of the display with something light tight (permanent marker, dark nail polish etc.). (This is not an actual light sensor, but open silicon which in the normal use of the display would be covered by a case. Not adding the paint should not damage the display but you won't enjoy it)

My badge does nothing / back light does not work

Come to the muCCC village and use the flash station to reflash your badge.

If that didn't fix it, try switching the badge off. Before switching it on again, push the joystick to the right (away from DARC) and then switch on the badge.

Another issue might simply be an empty battery, so have a try with recharging.

If you soldered in the SMA connector, you might have shorted the left ground pad to a VCC pad underneath. These two pads which are separated only by a small margin must not be connected.

I have connected the rad1o, but it doesn't show up in dmesg or similar

I have connected the rad1o, it shows up in dmesg, but gnuradio etc does not connect

me@you:~$ hackrf_info 
hackrf_open() failed: HACKRF_ERROR_LIBUSB (-1000)
me@you:~$ modprobe -r hackrf 
me@you:~$ hackrf_info 
Found HackRF board.
xxxxxxxxx....

If you are running Arch Linux there might be a similar problem but of different origin. The solution is provided within the hackrf-github Issue page.

Make sure that USB autosuspend is disabled, as the first contact with rad1o after resuming fails, and default autosuspend delay in Linux is pretty short (2 seconds).

I've connected the rad1o in Mass Storage Mode, but the filesystem is read only

Currently, the only known solution is to do a reflash of the rad1o.

You could give following a try:

- find the mounted partition of you rad1o, check therefor the output of mount (see following example)

/dev/sdb on /media/you/FE49-AB84

- unmount the partition

umount /media/you/FE49-AB84

- run fsck on that partition

fsck.vfat -v /dev/sdb

- follow the instructions of fsck

- to prevent this happen again, eject the partition properly

either: umount /dev/sdb
or: use the eject functionality of your desktop manager

FATAL: No supported devices found to pick from.

  1. Try running hackrf_info and see if your device is found
  2. Make sure you started your badge in HKRF-OLD mode.
  3. If it is found and you still get the error above, try upgrading your gnuradio package or compile it from source yourself. The latter solved the problem for me.
  4. Try to unload the hackrf kernel module (“rmmod hackrf”) before starting gnuradio
  5. If sudo hackrf_info works but plain hackrf_info doesn't, see I can't use HackRF without sudo below, or run gksudo gnuradio (ugly).

I can't use HackRF without sudo

If you run HKRF-OLD (not HACKRF), the device registers as idProduct 6089, and you will probably not have this problem. If you're sure that you want to use HACKRF, idProduct is cc15, and both udev and gnuradio have to know about this ID.

udev: move 53-hackrf.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d and do /etc/init.d/udev restart.

gnuradio: <todo>

Make sure

  • the “plugdev” group exists on your system, or pick one that does.
  • the idVendor and idProduct values are the ones shown in dmesg when plugging in the USB.

pybombs install gnuradio => "make: target not found"

Make sure you did not turn on the generation of documentation, or install `doxygen` through your package manager.

How do I put the rad1o into HackRF mode?

  1. Push the middle button to the left and hold it while switching the power on.
  2. Select Exec Firmware. The bootloader menu shows up:
    • CAMP - the camp firmware
    • HACKRF - HackRF firmware (badge identifies as USB ID 1d50:cc15 ⇒ probably not recognized by older HackRF software)
    • TESTAPP
    • HKRF-OLD - HackRF-compatible mode (badge identifies as USB ID 1d50:6089 ⇒ recognized by older HackRF software)
  3. Select HACKRF or HKRF-OLD depending on the type of HackRF software you're going to use.

I have a question about the LEDs

The LEDs section is answering all regular questions that came up.

Can I just get the binary somewhere?

Yes.

During camp we try to regularly get firmware updates here, keep in mind that it will not always be up to date with the f1rmware repo:

https://github.com/rad1o/binary-cccamp2015

I heard some parts may need resoldering

Usually no parts need resoldering but we occasionally notice that the following three parts are sometimes not soldered perfectly:

  • USB connector
  • audio connector
  • battery connector
  • IC402 (BGS12SL6) in rare cases (LCD/everything not working, TX too low)

If you experience an error that may relate to any of these three, we recommend a close look at the solder pads of those parts. WARNING: Always unplug the battery when soldering, especially when soldering the battery connector!

Why do I have bad FM reception performance

Please have in mind that rad1o's internal antenna is tuned for about 2.4 GHz. This means that it cannot perform eg. in the FM Band (87.5 to 108 MHz). Sorry - but that's physics. If you need good performance, consider adding an SMA connector and an antenna that is optimized for the specific frequency.

What's this big peak in the middle of the spectrum?

If I rebuild the l0dables I get an error

When you build an unmodified of a l0dable and try to run it from the campapp you could get an error like:

l0dable incompat.

To fix this, try rebuilding the campapp and replacing camp.b1n

rad1o usb disconnects every 5 seconds / not usable at all

Symptoms:

  1. When you do hackrf_info multiple times you get sometimes hackrf_open() failed: HACKRF_ERROR_LIBUSB (-1000) and sometimes you get Found HackRF board…
  2. osmocom_fft fails to find HackRF, does never start
  3. dmesg show usb reconnect after every failed attempt to find HackRF board

Reason: usb-autosuspend. manually configured auto-suspend or you may have laptop-mode-tools or tlp (thinkpad powersaving tool)

Solution: disable usb-autosuspend for ids 1d50:cc15 and 1d50:6089 (if your using tlp add USB_BLACKLIST=“1d50:cc15 1d50:6089” to /etc/default/tlp)

Your battery is empty.

on/off switch is not working anymore

perhaps you soldert together the two tiny smd resistors next to the lower right WS2812b led. In my case that disables the switch. When i removed the tin it works again.

troubleshooting.txt · Last modified: 2016/12/27 00:26 by 151.217.239.253