Updates are killing my boards

Not an idiot, green maybe, but not an idiot! :slight_smile:

As we have been discussing on another thread in this same section of the forum, this sort of issue should not be happening. Someone else also pointed out that there was others with dead Cobra 2 boards with the latest 4.3 update.

Out of interest, I have two Cobra 2 boards sitting on the shelf so I decided to try and see if I could get that to work and updated to 4.3. The update seems to work as it updates and reboots and it shows up in Device Manager as a ā€œGHI NETMF Interface: but Fez config when I try a check for update reports " Failure - Device is not connected or not respondingā€

Every few seconds the device does a disconnect and reconnect on USB and often appears as an UNKNOWN DEVICE. I am connected to external DC power too.

Looks like I have a non-working Cobra 2 myself now :frowning:

@ Dave McLaughlin - We are still looking into this issue but we do not have any fix just yet.

Just gave it a try on 2 Cobraā€™s, update looks ok, just a ā€œno response from deviceā€ at the end but Iā€™m able to deploy and run software on it.

I was able to put it back in boot loader and apply 4.2 afterwards

Dave you described my scenario exactly. I actually have the Cobra II (WiFi) board which is discontinued. Not sure if that has anything to do it.
But as you described the Connecting/Disconnecting every minute or so is happening. While in FEZ Config, I see it appear for a few seconds, but never long enough for me to push an update before the device is no longer found.

@ John@ GHI, does this mean thereā€™s a real issue? Is it a reason not to update to 4.3 on these devices just yet? Potential impact on G120 or is it just Cobra ?

@ Brett - We are still trying to reproduce it first.

@ Brett. I can confirm that it is not just Cobra 2 as I just tried to update a G120 based custom board and it is stuck in the same infinite loop.

I then tried the manual method to update TinyBooter on the custom G120 board and was able get the boot loader installed and it sat there for about 5 mins without resetting.

Then I installed the firmware and then I could update the LCD, do a reboot clr and now I have the LCD working and itā€™s ready for deployment.

I then tried the same procedure on my other custom G120 and it works tooā€¦

Something in Fezconfig is falling over if you donā€™t update the Tinybooter at the same time manually.

Lastly I tried this with my Cobra 2 board and it is now working too.

1 Like

Looks like I have the same issue.

I got the module ā€œG120HDR Module Rev2ā€

But it has NET 4.2.
I tried to update to 4.3 without luck.

Right now it only has the TinyBooter V1.1
Looks like the version is very old.

And the USB enumerates as a COM port.
As per your manual if the modes etc are left floating it should come up with USB but it does not.
I do not know how to proceed. I have spend a whole day on this now.

Not sure if I bricked the module

I have G120 with Tiny booter V1.1, and updated all of them to 4.3.x just fine.
If your borad appears a COM Port, may be there is no Firmware on it ?

See my tera term screen (image Attached)
It tells no firmware.
Not sure what I can do next.

The FEZConfig and MFDeploy cannot connect to the board

It says BAD FIRMWARE not no firmware. Thatā€™s somewhat differentā€¦

Because you erased the device, thereā€™s no firmware active on it. Thatā€™s why it wonā€™t come up and be visible as a USB device but just shows up as a COM port. This is not a problem. You should however use FezConfig to connect to the board via USB not via serial; can you show us a screen shot of FezConfig doing that please?

The other thing to make sure is you use the 1K method when sending the bootloader file; if you donā€™t you may get corruption. https://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/54/loader-tinybooter-g120-and-emx-families You may also have overwritten the file and caused an issue there too and you may have to repair/reinstall the GHI SDK to get the file back.

Thanks Brett

https://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/54/loader-tinybooter-g120-and-emx-families
This link helped. Now it is all good.

Can you point me to a Glide or something reasonable
for a T43 LCD sample program

And how do I connect the touch screen, I think I have to connect to the User header. Any pointers on what pins to connect will help

I have the LCD program working niceā€¦

1: If someone can point me how to wire the touch screen it will help
2: Is there any way to speed up the boot up time. There is a 15 sec wait before the code runs

 
using System;
using System.Collections;
using Microsoft.SPOT;
using Microsoft.SPOT.Presentation;
using Microsoft.SPOT.Presentation.Media;

namespace MFConsoleApplication2
{
    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            // The font object from a resource
            Font font = Resources.GetFont(Resources.FontResources.cambriaBold);
            Bitmap LCD = new Bitmap(SystemMetrics.ScreenWidth,
                            SystemMetrics.ScreenHeight);

          //clears the memory and not the display
          LCD.Clear();
          //draw on memory
          LCD.DrawLine(Colors.Green, 1, 10, 10, 40, 40);

            // Draw to the screen buffer, not the screen
            LCD.DrawText("Hello World!", font, Colors.Yellow, 100, 100);

            // Flush the buffer ot the display
            LCD.Flush();
        }
    }
}
```cs][/code

Which LCD are you using? If this is any of the GHI ones then they connect to a T socket as they use the internal ADC of the CPU to read the touch.

I am seeing the same issue with a G400 and G120 based boards. Previous firmware was fast but now with 4.3 I am seeing the same 10+ seconds boot time before I see the LOADING image appear.

Iā€™ve even used the REBOOT CLR option in FEZCONFIG and it will takes time now to boot.

Yesā€¦
I have the G120HDR Module Rev2
and the Display T43 Module

The Display come up fine.

But The other 3 connectors are SPI, USB and User
It does not have a T socket

You need to wire link the USER socket to the T socket pins.

Check the schematic for the Cobra 2 board to see which pins you need to connect.

I donā€™t see this. 4.3 does boot a little slower for me and the boot up image I use does flicker a bit, but the startup time is nothing like 10seconds. Maybe its just related to a particular assembly.

@ microt - for G120 based boards you could try to start FezConfig and select from the menu ā€œAdvancedā€ -> ā€œReboot CLRā€ after that boot should be significant faster

@ RobvanSchelven I tried ā€œAdvancedā€ -> ā€œReboot CLRā€ . It rebooted.
But the boot up time after power up is still the same