Issues with power on for O6

#1

Hi,

I’ve got a couple of Orion O6 boards powered over USB-C, both running what should be the latest firmware. Ever since I got them both boards have had issues with powering on - sometimes when power is applied they’ll not respond, with the power supply showing at most a tiny current draw. Pressing the power button occasionally has an impact but not reliably, the boards will usually recover after a few goes at this with gaps of approximately 10 minutes in between but sometimes it needs a bit longer. There’s nothing plugged into them except dual ethernet, serial and NVMe.

When the boards are in the quiescent state the power supply shows them drawing a low current (typically 10mA or less) at 5V like they’ve not triggered PD negotiation properly.

Is this a known issue?

#2

Which USB-C PD charger do you use?

Try another model?

#3

This is happening with multiple supplies, the main one being a Cambrionix PDSync which I’m pretty confident in the quality of; I’ll also note that physically removing the power cable doesn’t help here, nor does switching to another supply.

#4

Hi Mark! On the 3 that passed through my hands I have not yet noticed this. However I noticed that they’re negotiating 20V, and I’ve exclusively been using some recent 65W and 100W GaN adapters (“baseus” brand from amazon/ali). I didn’t manage to power them from cheap DIY adapters that work with the Rock5-ITX however, which probably indicates that they have strict requirements. Maybe there’s a timing issue between them and the adapter during the negotiation in your case. Not sure how to verify this.

BTW I’m using the outer connector on the boards. I seem to remember that the second one also works, but it’s not how I’m using them. Maybe it would be worth trying to change the connector in your case to see if it changes anything?

#5

Yeah, the 20V matches what I’ve seen when I’ve looked with things that report the voltage. The problem seems to be not triggering the negotiation at all. I’m using the outer socket too, apart from a few times when I’ve been trying other stuff to see if it helps. I’m pretty confident of the quality of the supplies I’m using, the main unusual thing seems to be powering back on again within a couple of minutes (it’s a test automation setup).

It does smell like there’s a microcontroller powering itself off a capacitor that doesn’t notice the input being disconnected or something.

Some other people at work were reporting issues, including one person using the ATX connector rather than USB-C.

#6

Your analysis is interesting, because I’ve been flashing my first board a lot (maybe 50-100 times), and I do remember that sometimes, after unplugging/replugging it happened that it wouldn’t restart unless I press the power button. I didn’t pay much attention given it was consecutive to flashing, but it might actually have something in common with your experience.

Maybe you should look what UART4 emits (460kbps IIRC). It’s possible that it will spit errors. Or it’s also possible that as you suspect, it doesn’t power off fast enough and does not pass via a reset phase.

#7

I’ll try to try UART4, though the boards are wired into my lab so it’s rather a chore to pull them out, attach cabling and set something up to monitor it. The power button does sometimes help, though more often than not it has no effect.

#8

This could definitely fuel your theory of the uC that’s not properly reset.

Just in case that helps, maybe you can just connect the UART to another close board’s extra UART without having to unplug the board ? I’m seeing that there’s also UART4 which is supposed to emit power management info, I don’t know what to expect there but it could also be useful.

#9

The issue is needing to pull the boards out to gain physical access to plug something into them - the other end of the link is actually a lot easier to work with.