SD shield bricked after typical, safe use

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comperem
 
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SD shield bricked after typical, safe use

Post by comperem »

I was so stoked when the SD Shield arrived and was working with the step-by-step instructions. It's easy to use and worked great. But it stopped working with only the normal handling and use in a laboratory setting. There were no drops, no long periods in the sun in the car, and no unusual voltages we intentionally applied. We handled the device with the same care as the arduino, which means by hand, no static mats, but the arduino seems to work fine with typical handling and the sd shield didn't.

The shield was connected to an Uno R3 connected via the usb cable, used only the sd card purchased from Adafruit, and had an accelerometer and subsequently a gyro connected via the I2C bus.

Then it stopped for no apparent reason. We tried multiple different know-good Arduinos, different sd cards, and eventually reverted to the SD shield's CardInfo sketch. No workee.

How do I troubleshoot this? The usb cable is working and all the pins to the arduino look great.

It's bricked and for really no apparent reason and I have few leads on how to troubleshoot. I'll check 3.3V but that'll be fine because it's the same as the arduino pin.

What are typical failure points on this shield? Any tips???

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: SD shield bricked after typical, safe use

Post by Franklin97355 »

Try reading the card on a regular computer. Do any of the LEDs light?

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comperem
 
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Re: SD shield bricked after typical, safe use

Post by comperem »

Yes, the card is fine and had data from a previous logging session. We reformatted it in Windows 7. We also tried that same sd card in another sd shield and it worked fine. The shield is bricked after about 2 months of indoor, on-the-table use.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: SD shield bricked after typical, safe use

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

If you have access to an oscilloscope, check the signals going through the 74HC4050 level shifter.

The schematic mapping signals to pins is here:
https://learn.adafruit.com/system/asset ... 1396882397

and this datasheet will map pin names to physical pins on the package:
http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet ... 50_CNV.pdf

You should see 5v signals on the input pins being copied to 3.3v signals on the output pins.

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