constant red led at startup

[frankarditi]

hi all,

hope I'm not posting a hundred times solved topic, but I didn't find anyone in the same situation as mine (though it's hard to imagine I'm the first in that case).

I'm using CF since few months; love it. reading forum and the wiki helped many times.

today's issue is:
I power on the CF, green led blinks once shortly, blue is constant, and red is constant.
then, nothing happens (no rotor, no flashing, only constant red + blue leds). Same thing happens pugged in USB or with (full) battery power.

I tried another battery, nothing changes.
I thought that it might be a firmware issue (actual firmware is cflie_260613_noEsky.bin [https://bitbucket.org/Surrender/crazyfl ... /downloads]), so I tried the bootloader, but no connection.

any tip ?

thanks a lot
f

[tobias]

This sounds like a tricky problem and since the bootloader fails to connect it makes it even trickier. My first thought was a corrupt firmware but since it worked before that is uniquely and I would have expected the bootloader to still work.
Any sign of damage to any component?
Is the behavior any different if you run it only from USB (battery disconnected)?
Do you have access to a JTAG to program it from?

[frankarditi]

thanks tobias,

as I was a bit despaired trying over and over to start up the CF, I finally left it plugged to the USB port. after few minutes or more, red and green leds finally blinked normally. then, I unplugged it and tried to run it from battery, but same issue happened again. I went back to USB, same issue, but I waited again, and it came back to quite normal state (green light was going a bit crazy -irregularly, like hesitating about battery charge state). anyway, I finally managed starting the CF, and after few tries, uploading previous firmware (cflie-2013.4.bin). since then, everything looks fine.
Although no visual sign of damaged component, I really thought that was the point, as it's so weird that the firmware went fine for a while.

Now CF flew three times without any troubles, but I just wait few times more for turning this post to solved. Never know.

thanks again.

[tobias]

Good news! There might be some cracked soldering somewhere that is causing this behavior. If the behavior comes back try to inspect the soldering with something magnifying, especially the MCU (big chip on the bottom) for any cracks. Can be really hard to spot though. Hope it continues to work!