BBB in Cold Weather

[Steve Moser]

It seems my BBB locks up at temperatures under 25F and then will not power on until it warms up.  

Any ideas -besides a heater :)

[Bill Pretty]

Build a BBB with mil-spec or industrial parts ?

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[Special Computing]

Special Computing has BeagleBoneBlack derivative with Industrial/Wide Temperature parts for commercial use.

https://specialcomp.com/beaglebone/#22911

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 7:05 AM, Steve Moser <steve...@lanamfoundry.com> wrote:

It seems my BBB locks up at temperatures under 25F and then will not power on until it warms up.  

Any ideas -besides a heater :)

--

[Steve Moser]

Thank you. Any way to modifying an existing?  

What components sort of die in the cold?

[Gerald Coley]

All it take is one. You would need a new processor and memory for sure. Most of the passives should be OK.

Gerald

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 9:26 AM, Steve Moser <steve...@lanamfoundry.com> wrote:

Thank you. Any way to modifying an existing?  

What components sort of die in the cold?

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Gerald

 

ger...@beagleboard.org

http://beagleboard.org/

[Steve French]

Steve#2,

I am actually surprised to hear this!  I have run several BBBs in outdoor winter environments for outdoor winter shows for 3 years in a row with no problems.  The temperatures @ my outdoor shows routinely get down to 0degF and I have never had a problem.  Check out the first page of my 7-part tutorial here, which shows some pictures of the BBBs in some animals out in the snow.  I wonder if you are using uSD cards that cause the problem?  In all of my cases, I used the built in 2gb eMMC for the OS.  The first year ran angstrom and node.js services....this past year ran debian and python services.  Not sure why you are having temperature related problems, except perhaps the uSD card.

--

Respectfully,
frenchy (Steve French)

www.voltvision.com

[evilwulfie]

Put your board in the freezer,  take it out and selectively warm up the components till the board starts working
that way you will see whats not functioning at cold temps.

I would suspect the processor or EMMC. I have had bad luck with flash at cold temps in the past on other projects.

Unfortunately the specs will list lowest temps but some parts will work lower then spec and some wont 
its hit and miss.

Only way to be sure you have a board that will work at low temps is buy a commercial spec'd board
I saw a link to one here some time back. Search list for that solution.

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[Steve Moser]

you nailed it, they are running on the uSD.  they are 4GB uSD, but do not come with any eMMC.  I have several BBB with 4GB eMMC.  It is running a customized OS on the uSD.  I have tried taking an image of the SD and writing to the eMMC but no luck.

[Steve French]

Gerald,

Not sure why you say "You would need a new processor and memory for sure."  The BBB uses the Sitara XAM3359AZCZ100, and according to page9 of this datasheet, it says it should operate down to -40degC.  Even this eMMC datasheet says it will operate down to -20degC.

Not sure what is happening here, but I have had the 2GB model work fine down to almost 0degF (-18degC), although I never did keep track of how cold it really got.  I can see now that I was pretty close to the edge of trouble.  Admittedly this past december2015 show only got below 0degC once or twice, but I had 9 BBBs outside running without trouble.

--

Respectfully,
frenchy (Steve French)

www.voltvision.com

[Gerald Coley]

BBB uses the AM3358 processor.

Gerald

[Robert Nelson]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 10:29 AM, Steve French <voltv...@gmail.com> wrote:

Gerald,

Not sure why you say "You would need a new processor and memory for sure."  The BBB uses the Sitara XAM3359AZCZ100, and according to page9 of this datasheet, it says it should operate down to -40degC.  Even this eMMC datasheet says it will operate down to -20degC.

I remember seeing a note/errata somewhere talking about "XAM3359xxxx" where actually mis-silkscreen parts we used on the BBB..

Regards,

--

Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[Gerald Coley]

Yes, that was a while back and is covered on the WikI. They were special screens when we first started. Max frequency and an AM3359 is 800MHz. These were screened for 1GHZ operation.

Gerald

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[Steve Moser]

It seems one solution would be to run on the eMMC?  so any advice on what I may be doing wrong:

I have BBB with no eMMC (probably a stripped China copy, that is running off a 4GB uSD.

I would like to take an image of this 4GB uSD and write it to the 4GB eMMC of the full version of the BBB.

I have tried using the backup restore instructions but it does not work.  What should I check for to figure out my problem?

[Steve French]

Gerald,

Luckily all of mine are "A5C" and the processor says XAM3359.  I got lucky on that one and will pay closer attention to that in the future for cold temperature operation.  Thanks!

[Gerald Coley]

Yes, A5C was the fake AM3359.

Gerald

[Gerald Coley]

Well, if you board has no eMMC, then it is not a real BBB. And, there is no way of knowing what parts on there are really the best parts. So it could be anything on it that does not like cooler temperatures.

Gerald

[Robert Nelson]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 10:47 AM, Steve French <voltv...@gmail.com> wrote:

Gerald,

Luckily all of mine are "A5C" and the processor says XAM3359.  I got lucky on that one and will pay closer attention to that in the future for cold temperature operation.  Thanks!

I still have an omap3-xm running on the roof:

http://connectivity.digikey.com/WeatherPic/outside.jpg

it's seen many winters, including a few around -40C/F..

I believe the important thing, air sealed box and those moisture sucker packets, moisture on the pcb/components can wrack havoc.

Regards,

[Steve Moser]

Hello,

Attached are two pictures of the two boards, I am trying to take image from 4GB uSD card on left and write to 4GB eMMC on right.

http://imgur.com/a/EJQHr

[Gerald Coley]

Where did you buy these things?

Gerald

[Steve Moser]

They came as part of some equipment from China.

[Steve Moser]

any idea how to move that exact software to eMMC?

[Robert Nelson]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 11:58 AM, Steve Moser <steve...@lanamfoundry.com> wrote:

any idea how to move that exact software to eMMC?

rsync works great...

Regards,

[inju...@mail.com]

One reasonable troubleshooting technique would be to use a can of circuit cooler to identify exactly what part of the board is causing the malfunction.

I would also suspect a bad solder joint before a bad component on a temperature related bug like this.

If you are moderately competent with surface mount soldering, you might try resoldering some of the connections in the area of the board you have determined is causing the problem by using the circuit cooler. This is assuming that the warranty has expired.

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Thu, 7 Jan 2016 09:21:20 -0800 (PST), Steve Moser
<steve...@lanamfoundry.com> declaimed the
following:

>Hello,
>
>Attached are two pictures of the two boards, I am trying to take image from
>4GB uSD card on left and write to 4GB eMMC on right.
>
>http://imgur.com/a/EJQHr
>

Yeesh... Flexible boot system if the one on the left runs with that
many components missing... no 5V in, no USB host (and I'm guessing that's
the USB power conditioning missing near it), no onboard flash, whatever
(EEPROM?) near the boot select area (whose switch appears to be missing,
along with reset/power switches -- though that may just be black-on-black
switches), and four other chips missing...
--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlf...@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

[dl4mea]

I recently had one random selected BBB sourced from Embest in the clima chamber at -40°C and it started and operated flawlessly within these conditions. I was somehow surprised by myself a little bit.

--
Günter (dl4mea)

[Steve French of Volt Vision]

Günter,
Was it booting from the eMMC or a uSD card?

--
Respectfully,
-frenchy (Steve French)
www.voltvision.com

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