I am fairly new to soldering hardware components, and I recently tried soldering connector pins onto my board so I could connect the WIFI Shield, and something went wrong. I tried connecting to my board using the IDE with the WIFI Shield plugged into my board, and I got a couple flashes of green from the LED and then solid white that doesn’t turn off until I disconnect the board. I’m not sure if I soldered it poorly and caused a hardware failure, but after soldering the connectors on I checked for continuity between adjacent pins to make sure I wasn’t going to short anything. Here are some pictures of my soldering (I know it is a bit hard to see), and any advice I can get on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated!
I need a bit more resolution on that image. I can’t really tell.
Does the board work without the wifi shield attached?
I’m having some trouble getting a higher resolution image with my camera, but I will post some once I can. Yes the board worked fine before I attempted to solder the connectors on, now the board flashes green a few times and then has the solid white light regardless of whether the WIFI Shield is plugged in or not and the IDE doesn’t think the board is there at all. Another interesting note I just noticed, when I first plug the board in when the light flashes blue I hear the audio cue that a device has been connected, but then when the LED switches to solid white I get the audio cue that a device has been disconnected.
Yeah, it looks like some solder is really close to the ground from what I can see in the picture.
I’d check for any shorts like that which may have been created and then it should work again. We can send a replacement otherwise as I can see our manufacturing sticker on the back.
I cleaned up the board a little to make sure there were no shorts, and I believe I found the problem- I’m using a R1 camera board and a R2 WIFI Shield, and I didn’t ensure the pins matched up fully before connecting them and I connected a few mismatched pins that shouldn’t have been connected (due to the R1 and R2 boards having slightly different pin layouts). Would this mismatch cause some components on either the camera board and/or WIFI Shield to burn out?
It shouldn’t. Also, the R1/R2 doesn’t matter. Pins have the same functions.
The camera board has the pins on the right side as GND, Vin, P7, P8, P9, SYN, BOOT, RST while the pins on the corresponding side for the WIFI Shield is GND, VCC, P7, P8, RST, BOOT, SWD, SWC. So this isn’t a possible cause for a hardware malfunction?
No, those are just labels. None of the pins that are different are connected to anything on the WiFi shield.
Ok that’s good to know, but then I’m still lost as to what could be causing my issue. The board also smells like a component might’ve burnt out, but I’m fairly confident there were no shorts caused due to my soldering (although I could always be mistaken).
Hi, can you try reloading the firmware? Click connect while the board is not connected to the PC and follow the dialogs.
I followed the steps and connected the wire between BOOT and RST and I get stuck on this screen while the white LED never goes off.
The white LED shouldn’t turn on if the device is in DFU mode. It’s still running the normal firmware.
Please try connecting BOOT0 to 3.3V pin (other side of the board).
There should be no lights on it when it connects to the PC.
I connected BOOT0 to 3.3V and the LED still turns on (flashes green at first then solid white).
Huh, please verify the headers are soldered well. The system shouldn’t do that if it’s connected well. This is a hardware recovery feature of the chip, not our software.
Ok I will re-solder the headers tomorrow when I go into my school’s lab, and I will let you know if that solves my issue. Thanks again for taking the time to help me work through this troubleshooting!
After my first attempt to re-solder, the problem has not gone away. My Lab TA is currently taking a look at it and attempting to clean up my solder-job, so I will keep trying but I’m not sure if this will fix my issue. I may try to remove the header pins and see if I can get the board to work again that way.
After my Lab TA helped me clean up my soldering, after connecting the jumper wire between the BOOT and RST pins the LED wouldn’t turn white and after following the prompts in the IDE it said it successfully reprogrammed the device. Now I’m at this stage and the LED is back on white (I’m not sure if it’s working correctly at this point though):
Mmm, it might be broken. It’s getting stuck initializing the board. The White LED turns off when it’s done.
I’m wondering if you got solder into the SDRAM caps area… please check around the board if there are any shorts in the center.
Given you can relfash the chip the only thing that can take it down is that the SDRAM doesn’t boot anymore. That said… I don’t know how you would have gotten solder into that. It’s not near the pins.
Wait, you have an H7 regular.
There’s barely any hardware to fail on that thing. There’s no SDRAM. Please verify you don’t see any stray solder connections on the top of the board.
If you can flash it then it means the board is basically working. We don’t even need the sensor working too boot. Please try removing that sensor and see if the board connects.
I looked around and didn’t notice anything, so i tried again and I got through the initializing phase this time, and now the board is blinking blue and a popup of the file system came up so I think the board connected fully now. The only thing I’m unsure about is the Loading bar popup that isn’t going away:
Is it safe to disconnect the board now and assume it is working? Or should I wait for the loading bar popup to go away?