Feather M0 does not work

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lamachine
 
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Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

Posted this on discord, but figured here would also be well advised.

I am VERY confused. I appear to have killed two A0 WiFi by soldering them to a header. I mounted one on a tripler and another just on headers. UNFORTUNATELY I did not test them before soldering the headers, but I have never had a bad part from Adafruit. Any suggestions or people to contact?

There was a message in the adafruit forums about someone getting a dead M0 just recently, so maybe a quality issue?
viewtopic.php?f=57&t=182914

To make it worse, I also soldered an SD wing and GPS wing to the tripler, so if the processor board is bad, I lost all of it.

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dastels
 
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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by dastels »

Lesson 1: use female headers on the tripler so you can remove boards. Have some doubles/triplers/quads on hand with female headers makes prototyping and experimenting very easy.

But for the problem at hand, can you post some clear photos of the M0 and the soldering?

Dave

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lamachine
 
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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

Dave,

I will have to post the pictures tomorrow when I am back in my shop.

I actually have three prototypes running with the tripler with headers, but this was "low profile" improvement. I figured better the bare tripler than trying to connect everything on a prototype board. Actually made a nice little package.

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by dastels »

Ah. True about getting it low profile. Full size headers are so tall! I tend to use the shorty headers; still not as low as it could be, but not bad and retains the advantage of the headers.

Dave

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

Kind of need to deliver a set to a customer... should I risk it with another of M0s?

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by dastels »

I've been looking at the tutorials and schematics and haven't seen any problems yet. SPI chip selects for the WiFi and SD card are different, The RTC is I2C and the GPS is serial.

So what happens when you connect USB to the feather with Arduino running? Will it connect

From what you said, you didn't prototype at all to see if that combination would actually work together? It's always possible that specific combination will have a usage collision of some sort.

I'd usually advise stripping it down and starting with just the Feather, make sure the wifi is working, add the GPs, then the adalogger... testing at each stage. That's a lot of desoldering that could result in damage of its own.

Another thought: the soldering looks decent, but there might be bad solder joints and/or shorts. It might be worth reflowing the soldering if you haven't.

Dave

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lamachine
 
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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

Dave, I actually shipped a set to a customer on the tripler with headers, so it has been thoroughly prototyped. All working together splendidly. And at this point I have learned the lesson of testing each step of the way during assembly.

When I plug them in, they do not appear as device, and do not list a port in the arduino IDE. Oddly enough, one of the has LED13 come on solid. The other one in the tripler show no sign of life, but the GPS board behave normally with the blinking FIX light.

Solder joints all confirmed (except one missed on SCK on the SD board oddly).

The earlier post referred to in my first post describes basically the same thing. That seems to stretch coincidence a bit thin.

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by dastels »

Please email [email protected] with a link to this thread, your order number, and request the replacement of one Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi with uFL - ATSAMD21 + ATWINC1500.

You should be able to carefully desolder the Feather and replace it.

Dave

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lamachine
 
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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

Will do.

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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

Dave,

Two issues. I have two dead processors, but apparently only one was approved for replacement. Second, I am not likely to successfully desolder four separate headers on the two feathers to recover them well enough to reinstall headers, nor is it worth my time.

I believe (since I did prototype the complete system) that Adafruit should also replace the SD feather, the GPS feather, and the tripler board all as part of the "cost" of sending out bad parts. When I asked to escalate that request through the CS email, they said all replacements must be approved through the boards.

As I mentioned in my note, I am neither new to Adafruit as a customer, nor am I talking about replacing whole orders. I have well over a thousand dollars of orders under my own name, and more than that for my customers. I have already lost time assembling the bad parts, troubleshooting the issue, going through these forums, and emailing CS, and find the response to my reasonable request pretty poor so far.

FYI, I ordered for additional M0's through DigiKey in hopes of avoiding the bad batch. One of them was also bad, and I am pursuing a replacement there as well.

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lamachine
 
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Re: Feather M0 does not work

Post by lamachine »

BUMP, been a month without reply. Can someone at least answer if not help?

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