Hardware crashing

#1

Hi,

I've had this axoloti for a few months, I added some sliders etc to the GPIO ports and had been using it really regularly with no problems. Put it on a shelf for about a month and came back to it, now when I plug in the USB power I get maybe 5 minutes before it crashes. Then it either goes into a loop of re-booting (lights alternating, sound for a fraction of a second and then dead) or just a hangs, with the red LED very fainty flickering and not booting. Last time I left it for an hour or so and I managed to get the 5 minutes again and back to the same loop, so I'm hoping it's not just completely dead.

Any thoughts on how I go about diagnosing / fixing?
Or is it quite likely just to have died on my shelf?

I've tried various power supplies / USB cables.
I haven't managed to power it up in a PC usb port yet in order to see what happens.
Also I've had a poke around with my finger and it doesn't seem like any of the components are getting excessively hot, so I'm a bit baffled.

Thanks,
Pete

(edited to have a more useful subject and moved to a more appropriate category)

#2

I cannot see leaving it on a shelf being the cause (unless it was getting jealous :slight_smile: )
Ive had 4 since the very beginning (3+ years?) , and some don't get used for quite long periods, and never had an issue.
(theres no volatile/backed up ram/battery to 'run out')

you can try holding down S2, which powering on , to see if its the patch that is installed keep crashing.

you can try to do a firmware reset (via dfu if necessary).
(seems unlikely to help, but worth a try)

apart from that, perhaps check the gpio solder joints, see if something is shorting.

#3

Thanks, I finally got to tearing it down today and I think I've fixed it. When I pulled the jumper cables out of the header pins one of the ground pins fell off so it might have been jiggling around and shorting something... Seems to be working now - but with an intermittent fault, who knows? Will have to keep playing to see.