Help with board not booting from PoE

Alex_Wells · September 24, 2020, 7:53am

TLDR: Two boards, one won’t boot from PoE, definitely the mainboard (or software) that is the problem, can anyone help me debug?

Hi, I have two identical setups:

RockPi4C
NVMe (Acer 128GB from Allnet)
RockPi PoE hat

Both booting from NVMe, from the same build (Debian 9) using the same guides. Both are connected to the same switch (Unifi 8 port 60w), using the same two sockets (have swapped both to eliminate anything to do with the switch). Switch shows <4w for the running board, and there are no other PoE devices connected.

One board will not boot from PoE alone, requiring USB power instead, I just get a green flashing light when using the PoE alone (according to @jack previously, this indicates that not enough power is reaching the board, or that the supply is irregular).

I have swapped the PoE hats, and the same situation holds - the same RPI does not boot, so I know that the hats are fine.

Can anyone help me with the next steps in debugging? I am running fairly simple packages at the moment, but I’m now going through comparing these to each other in the hope that I find something that looks different.

jack · September 24, 2020, 9:17am

Do you have multimeter? Can you measure the voltage of GPIO PIN 2 when powering only from the PoE. To power the board from PoE, no software is required.

Alex_Wells · September 24, 2020, 10:08am

Do you have multimeter

yes, so I put black to Pin6, red to Pin 2, range to 20v:

I get a pulse every ~1 second. Half the time it peaks at between 3v & 4v, half the time it peaks at 1.5v

bradlees · September 24, 2020, 3:10pm

Having the same problem here. Currently looking for my multimeter. Board gives flashing green light of of USW-8 and it gives the same thing when using a spare unifi POE adapter I have from the device that’s plugged into the USW-8 port. Adapter is exact spec the board calls for. Tried this with two nvme’s and two os’s.

Alex_Wells · September 25, 2020, 7:27am

Cheers @bradlees, @radxa any ideas on next steps please? Considering this is the 5v rail, I’m assuming that the board is not getting enough voltage quickly enough to recognise, and so not allowing the boot to happen.

Is this classed as a manufacturing defect? Are there any other steps I can take to check the board over? You can probably tell that I’m not an electrician… but I’ll happily electricute anything you tell me to

jack · September 27, 2020, 3:08am

This seems a shortcut of the board makes the PoE reset. Can you check:

power the board from USB C, is the ROCK Pi working fine? Measure the voltage of PIN2/6. Without the PoE HAT at all.
do you have dupang cable? If yes, you can use 4P dupan cable connect the PoE header and PoE HAT, another 2P connects 5V from the PoE HAT to PIN2/6 of ROCK Pi 4, ie not connect all 40P. Be Careful with the pin, make sure not insert the wrong ones.

Alex_Wells · September 29, 2020, 1:30pm

power the board from USB C, is the ROCK Pi working fine? Measure the voltage of PIN2/6. Without the PoE HAT at all.

Board works fine with USB C.
Voltage with PoE HAT (not using PoE port) 4.8v
Voltage without PoE HAT: 4.8v max, but fluctuates much lower

do you have dupang cable? If yes, you can use 4P dupan cable connect the PoE header and PoE HAT, another 2P connects 5V from the PoE HAT to PIN2/6 of ROCK Pi 4, ie not connect all 40P. Be Careful with the pin, make sure not insert the wrong ones.

Excuse the messy desk:

I get the same result, green light flashes every ~1s, no boot. Voltage pulses to 4v sometimes, usually between 2 & 3v, then back down to 0.

Alex_Wells · October 2, 2020, 2:38pm

Hi @radxa or @jack, is there anything further I can do to get this moving?

jack · October 4, 2020, 11:18pm

Thanks for the picture and measurements. We are on the holiday now. We will look into this issue after the holiday(8th, Oct).

Alex_Wells · October 27, 2020, 1:31pm

Hi @radxa, sorry I left this so long got very busy over here! However, wondering if you can give me any next steps or ways to investigate? I can boot the board from USB, just not from PoE alone.

Thanks,
Alex

David_Narine · November 19, 2020, 11:41pm

Hi, were you able to solve this? I also have a similar issue where I have a RockPI X but the 13 watt POE HAT doesnt power the board - i’ve tried on several RockPI X boards and I am just getting a blinking blue light every few seconds.

Thanks.

Alex_Wells · November 20, 2020, 9:07am

Different board, so I could be wrong but the blinking blue light is data read on the 4C. My problem is that the power light (green on my board) blinks if I try and run it from PoE.

I did not get it resolved (@radxa)

Alex_Wells · December 28, 2020, 1:23pm

Hi @jack @radxa is there anything further that can be done here?

If the answer is “new board” I’d like to know. I do appreciate that manufacturing is complicated and so some boards won’t come up to the same standard, but I’d love to get an indication of what could be wrong - just for my own learning.

Testing the good board:
Immediately goes to 5v and boots properly

Testing the bad board:
Goes to 3.5v in 1 second bursts, does not boot

jack · January 7, 2021, 3:26am

Sorry for late reply.

remove the M.2 adapter
based on your connection, add another two dupang cable on PIN4(5V) and PIN9(GND) from ROCK Pi 4 to the PoE HAT. This should fix “Voltage pulses to 4v sometimes”
use multimeter to measure PIN6 and PIN2, plug the PoE cable, if the power is 4.5 to 4.9 during boot, it’s normal.
if the poe hat can boot with one ROCK Pi 4 but not another, it means there is some issue with the ROCK Pi 4, not the PoE HAT.

Alex_Wells · January 17, 2021, 3:18pm

Thanks @jack, I tried as you suggested:

1.) Removing the M.2 drive doesn’t seem to have any effect
2.) Added the extra two cables, but still get a max of 3.94v across pin2/6

I guess I’ll need to look for another board. Thanks for your help, you taught me some new stuff.

All the best,
Alex