I would suggest booting with screen attached (via HDMI), you can see more details - they are preboot - shows booting of PI + what it tries to boot with.
Please remove for tests thermal pads from SSD. As you suggest, each time you open it it starts to work, when closed it doesn’t - so it seems like some hardware malfunction from my perspective.
Power LED (the Uconsole power) is dim for me all the time. LED on NVMe board is bright with ACT LED brightly flashing.
Uconsole may be quirky at some stages - but mine works just fine without any issues with similar setup (except the AIOv2).
Also, get smart monitoring and check NVMe: sudo apt install smartmontools sudo smartctl -a /dev/nvme0n1
This would print details about SSD - you can check life of it.
after i take out the power plug i cannot boot from nvme anymore. i need to flip to sd card, than boot, flip back to nvme and boot works again as long i dont take out usb c power. (i have no battery pack inside)
here is the hdmi message with the nvme boot problem
in the screenshot i booted without sd card, nvme was inside and after the uconsole usb c power was disconnected fully.
strange in the screenshot that it is written SD: card detected
i thougnt maybe it is the power supply, but same thing with the official raspberry latest strong one.
does the nvme need constant little power also when device is switched off?
does this work for all consoles like this, or just mine^^
(i have no battery pack inside)
That may be the case!
SInce I’m using a battery pack disconnect switch - once I’ve accidentally disconnected it while working - NVMe was inaccessible. You might be hitting the limit of charge controller in uconsole.
If for some reason you exceed limit of AXP228 (https://www.enimac.si/images/pdf/AXP228.pdf) then you might actually get a brownout on NVMe power rail. CM5 + NVMe is quite a power hungry package. Get a batteries and check with them
Add PI + uconsole baords + let’s say around 4W of active NVMe and you are might be hitting the limits.
I’ll check power path tomorrow, once I’ll bring multimeter home. Based on documents alone, seems like power budget to get everything running is quite low. Fully charged batteries, brightness max, kb back light max, it shows on usb meter around 7-9 Watts idle (avg, it oscillate a lot). While booting, power draw on nvme might be significantly higher. As per documentation of Kioxia drives (mine it that case), power required is up to 6 Watts. In such scenario, power controller seems to be unlikely to provide enough juice - droping nvme power rail at this crucial stage might render device unusable.
Btw, power reqs for SD card are usually in area of miliwatts. Absolute maximum that I’ve read in some docs is 1.2W with most around 0.4W. That’s a huge difference to nvme of 4 to 6 Watts.
Recharge it? I mean, while you are charging, it works as it should (charging + usage), but while there is larger power draw - it can use some juice from battery itself. It is transient thing, not constant. I can get my uconsole idle to 3.5W if required - which should give me around 5h of work time. In other cases - GPS, SDR, LORA etc + drive may get quite high power requirements.
Fresh boot - LCD 50%, KB 100%, no SDR/LORA/GPS - ~6W - after while ~4W
In use - LCD 100%, KB 100%, SDR/LORA/GPS - TAR1090, Meshtastic MUI - I see jumps to ~12W
If you ran waybar, you can get nice readout from power controller.
Not sure that will happen. As soon as you cannot power it on, you start charging. This already pushes some power into batteries and it should hold for that.
Actually, you will enter few quirks before reaching end of juice in battery.
First thing will be crackling sound from speakers - battery voltage under 3,5V will do that - workaround is to force output to JACK - no sound at all.
At around 3.2V I had sometimes screen going dark - system was working, but not enough to power it - so I’ve made myself a watchguard. If battery drops bellow certain “unsafe” voltage for more than 5 seconds - it needs to perform safe shutdown to be on safe side.
That’s why I’m trying to get 2S battery pack to be main source - as I could utilize more before hard limit of batteries.
I mean, when the uconsole doesnt get used for 2 weeks and battery goes completely out of power. Do i need to take out the nvme boot from sd card, power off, take out sd card and then put the nvme back and boot from nvme again?
Oh, that’s outside of scope for my tests - I’m running mine as daily driver - using it at work as laptop replacement.
I’ve did not tested if there’s any current draw while off yet.
Exactly — that is what I mean.
If the battery is completely drained after storage, the uConsole has effectively had a full power loss. My concern is whether, after recharging, it may show the same NVMe cold-boot issue that I see on my battery-less unit after USB-C power was fully disconnected.
No, as long as you charge it some before trying to power on. The system booting with the NVMe powering up is using just a bit more power than the USB-C circuit provides. So the system pulls some of the battery power to get over the hump, then goes back to running on the USB-C only. If the batteries run all the way down, no biggie as long as you charge them for a bit before you power on, so they can get it over that hump.
Wow! Received my upgrade boards today, installed one at a time to make sure everything worked. Last was to install the Silicon Power NVMe. Copied from SD to NVMe, shut down, and popped the SD out. The startup from the NVMe was fast enough that I powered off and back on because I didn’t believe it.
I got my uConsole near end of last month and a large pack with upgrades (Upgrade Kit + AC1200) and has been trying since to get my console working. But I could never get it to boot as it would either boot-loop not being able to boot NVME or it would boot but never make it through the boot screen getting halted by different services.
But, reading this thread… and the batteries…
It all came together!
