HOWTO.troubleshooting-rss2

Revision
--------
0.2 2017-09-03


Basic troubleshooting notes
===========================

Although boards are very robust it's still electronics.

Optical inspection
-------------------
Check for visible damages on the board. Good eyes our a magnifying 
loupe will help. Damages can be caused by inductive overvoltage, 
lightning damages etc. Dust and dirt on the main board can be cleaned 
with isopropanol and a toothbrush. However, the temp/RH SHT25 chip on 
the meteorological daughter card should neither be exposed to isopropanol
nor any other chemicals.

Board is described:
http://www.radio-sensors.com/pictures/S2-PCB-front-commented.jpg

Heat sensing
------------
Check the RSS2 board for short circuits. This can be done using the 
the 6-pin USB-TTL FTDI- cable, which has a built-in current limit of 
about 150mA. Connect power and sense with fingers if any component 
gets warm or hot. Most likely this will be the MCU or the voltage 
regulator, both on the front side of the board.

Measuring 
----------
Check the operating voltage using a multimeter/voltmeter between 
GND (pin 1) and VCC (pin 3) on the 6-pin connector located on the 
front side of the board, with a USB-TTL FTDI cable
connected. the voltage should be around 3V.

Reprogram boot loader
---------------------
If the board has correct operating voltage and everything else seems 
to be in order, you can try to re-program the bootloader. An Atmel ISP 
programmer is needed, e.g the AVRISP MkII

http://www.atmel.com/tools/avrispmkii.aspx

AVR Dragon is a newer a more availble alternative:
http://se.farnell.com/microchip/atavrdragon/in-circuit-debug-prog-jtag-spi/dp/2695291

The programmer is connected to the 6 pin connector on the board and your
computer. 

The bootlodader can be downloaded from:
http://www.radio-sensors.com/download/firmware/S2/bootloader/stk500v2/

A script for replashing bootlaoder holds the commands. You need to 
edit script to set used programmer etc.
http://www.radio-sensors.com/download/firmware/S2/bootloader/stk500v2/Program-sensor-16M.sh

Thanks
------
Bjorn Pehrson for document suggestions and improvements