The Raspberry Pi Thread [4]

There was a glitch with Raspbian when the 3B+ was first releaed where a false low voltgae warning flashed on screen. It was fixed pretty quickly but that link was posted a lot in the mean time detailing what the lightning bolt meant. I saved the link then forgot where I saved it too lol.

I'm afraid my scroll phat project has just come to an end.
While tinkering with it and trying out some codes, pulling and pushing the micro USB power plug in and out, the USB port for peripherals suddenly just stopped working. It is booting up fine but I can't use a mouse or keyboard. The bigger problem is, the wifi is off and there is no way to turn it on so that at least I can use it remotely. I guess that is it for this project until I got another pi zero w.
Tried to make use of the test points to connect a USB port but no success so far.

Swap in another SD card, or redo the one thats in it with a fresh image. Maybe its just a software glitch.
This is weird because my main Windows desktop PC, just yesterday, stopped accepting keyboard or mouse input on boot up. I couldn't log in. Put new batteries in my keyboard and trackball, no go. Plugged a USB keyboard in, no good. Rebooted and was able to access the BIOS so then I knew it was Windows glitching. Rebooted a few more times in desperation and was just about to give up and reinstall windows and it started working again? Still working a few restarts latter too. I have no idea why it did what it did, just that it was almost certainly a software issue.

Unfortunately, I think that was really it. The first thing I did was boot up the SD card with 3B and everything was okay with the mouse and keyboard. And the wifi was on. Then I flashed another SD card with Raspbian and boot it up on Zero W with the same problem. No mouse, no keyboard and no wifi. Which brought me down to a conclusion that the controller chip for both USB and wifi is fried. Both USB ports can power and boot the pi up fine. There's just no way to interface with it.

Bummer, was worth checking though. I very often add a Zero to any order I'm doing even if I don't need one for that project. That way I have at least one spare on hand for tinkering or to replace a failure. The limit of one per order is bit of a pain. No having to take one from some where else to try something. I've only even had one fail, a Zero W and it was all my own doing. Plugged it in one row off on the GPIO and didn't notice. I was feeding power in via the GPIO so 5v went where it wasn't suposed too. Didn't hurt the pHat or anything esle, just fried the Pi Zero. Wouldn't boot after that.

This is what I tried last night. Soldering a USB lead directly on to the test pads of the Pi ZW. But it didn't work which only means that the USB SoC itself is dead.
Some people tried this method to add an extra regular USB 2.0 port to the Pi Z.

I've done that, on my Pirate Radio. I soldered an extension on to the test pads on the Pi to plug in my FLIR and have it outside the case. It did work, but I found if I then tried to use the original USB port on the Pi it wouldn't work. Even with nothing plugged into the extension cable? Plugged in directly, didn't work, plugged in the soldered on cable, worked? Once I removed my add on cable the original port worked again?
Also be advised, if you have something plugged into both at the same time, it will not work. Only one device can be connected at any one time. You have to plug a hub in to use more than one device. So for example, if you have a keyboard plugged directly into the Pi, and something else plugged into your extension, neither will work until you unplug one of them. You might even have to reboot.
I'm not sure if the pads I used are the ones you used, I just don't remember. If you get D+ and D- backwards it won't work. Just to conform, the extension was working, but then stopped?
Something else I've noticed with the Pi Zero, is plugging something into the Device USB port after it boots up, can make it reboot. I have to make sure my USB hub is plugged in before I boot it up of it will reboot on me.

Found a picture of what I did, looks like its the same pads you used.

alphanumeric said:

Found a picture of what I did, looks like its the same pads you used.

Yup, exactly what I did, too.
I did this after the original port stopped working. I didn't suspect at the time of doing this that the USB SoC was already dead. I only realized it after doing this.

Ok, that clears that up. Bummer. I added the extension so my FLIR was outside my case and line of sight with my IR remote control. Plus I didn't have enough clearence to the side to plug it in with the usb adapter directly into the Pi.
It ended up not being reliable, likely my python code to be honest and how it had to interface with VLC radio so I eventually just unsoldered it.