bGeige throwing "NO SD CARD/ GPS reset" error, how do I fix it?

[Jeff Kubel]

I've been out of commission since December. I let the battery completely drain on my bGeige Nano (1.3.5) while it was mounted on my car. The next morning I plugged it into USB to charge it and didn't realize the power switch was on, so I immediately shut it off.

Upon full charge, I powered the unit on and now am getting "NO SD CARD/ GPS reset". Bluetooth will connect, but Safecast:Drive is displaying "Err. Data". Unit is writing files to SD card (config.txt, log000**.TXT), so I know the SD card is good. I also tried another SD card, same result. I'm also seeing different LED behavior on the card reader when the SD card is plugged in vs being unplugged.

I know the manual is careful to point out the unit should never receive USB power while switched on. Could this have caused damage in some way?

safecast.txt exists on the old card:

nm=bGeigie

did=2948

gt=0

gm=0

cpmf=334

cpmn=Cs137

bqmf=37

bqmn=Cs137

al=150

tz=4

cn=US

st=0

ss=0

sh=100

sm=0

cw=60

I tried copying it to the new card as well, same result.

config.txt exists on both the old card and the freshly formatted new card after running. On the old card, it's blank. On the new card, it shows:

9600,26,3,0,1,1,0

baud,escape,esc#,mode,verb,echo,ignoreRX

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I just got a new car and I'm dying for an excuse to go driving. 

[Jeff Kubel]

Resolved, solution was simple, restored the SAFECAST.TXT and CONFIG.TXT files as posted on github. Looks like one of them got corrupt or something. After that I followed the GPS reset procedure, and now I'm back in business. 

[o.meis...@arkat-bund.de]

Unfortunately I have got the same problem but I could not solve it by now.

There are the two text files on the SD card and the bGeigie (version 1.4.1) seems to access them: The second line (starting with "baud") was added to CONFIG.TXT and on that occasion the file was renamed to config.txt (with small letters). There have also been created log files on the SD card but all of them only contain $PMTK104*37 one or several times. The blue LED on the OpenLog flashes once every few seconds and the green LED flashes immediately afterwards very faintly (I guess that means that a small amount of data is transmitted to the SD card, probably a new line to a log file). And there is the No SD Card/GPS reset reading on the screen.

I appreciate any help that shows me how to solve the problem.

[o.meis...@arkat-bund.de]

I found that $PMTK104*37 means Full Cold Restart of the GPS receiver. However, after a short time the display shows a number of GPS satellites so the GPS receiver seems to work properly. But also at that time, there are no other data in the log files than $PMTK104*37.

And I must add that I have that problem from the start; the bGeigie did not work properly up to now.

[Sean Bonner]

Sounds like your files also are bad. Please use the files found here:

https://github.com/Safecast/bGeigieNanoKit/tree/master/SD%20card

In SAFECAST.TXT make sure to put your bGeigie Nano device number on the line that says 

DID= 

“device ID” 

And make sure to open the files with a text editor and save as the same, not with something like Word that will change the files into a .doc format which adds extra data and causes them to corrupt.

Let us know how that works.

-s

Sean Bonner
Co-Founder, Director of Global Operations
http://safecast.org

[o.meis...@arkat-bund.de]

Thank you for the response. Indeed, I did not enter the device ID. I was not aware that this is obligatory for using the bGeigie. The problem is solved.

For other readers of this thread: Information about the safecast.txt file is here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/safecast-devices/mrdk7YfY3dk/14DT8JSsCAAJ. The device ID can be found on the acrylic front plate just above the GPS receiver.