SD Corrupted when connecting Pi 2 to 4Borg

Submitted by santicosta@gmail.com on Wed, 01/20/2016 - 21:35

Forums:

HI,

I install everything on the raspberry Pi 2 as you describe on your instructions. It works perfectly when running alone without the 4Borg.

However, when I connect it to the 4Borg it starts once, I can ssh to it, but then it stops working. It keeps corrupting my SD card. Red light on and green light on all the time.

I tried with a new full 9V battery.

Any ideas?

piborg's picture

piborg

Thu, 01/21/2016 - 14:41

It is very unlikely that the boards are causing the SD card to become corrupted, it is only connected to the power and I2C pins on the GPIO.

It is much more likely there is a power problem which is causing the Raspberry Pi to loose the ability to write to the SD card properly.
The power loss causes the write to fail to complete correctly, corrupting the card.

I think these are the most likely culprits:

  1. The 9V battery cannot provide enough power with heavy use.
    This can often be the case with cheap, unbranded batteries.
    Is the 9V a known quality brand, such as Duracell?
  2. The SD card has problems.
    Sometimes SD cards develop faults and have trouble reading / writing correctly that show up in strange ways.
    Do you have another SD card you could try?
    Is the SD card a known quality brand, such as Kingston?
  3. There is a wiring problem with the cables between the PicoBorg Reverse and the Raspberry Pi.
    We have had cables which did not make a good connection for I2C communication, the same is possible for power.
    Could you confirm the cables are all correctly attached, maybe try swapping them with the spare cable?
  4. The wires between the 9V battery and the BattBorg are not making a good connection.
    If the BattBorg has trouble getting power from the battery then it may struggle to deliver power to the Raspberry Pi properly.

santicosta@gmail.com

Tue, 02/02/2016 - 17:58

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Sorry for the late reply; hectic at work ;-)

About your questions:

1. The 9V battery cannot provide enough power with heavy use.
Yes, I have a duracell

2. The SD card has problems.
I have a samsung evo 16GB @ http://www.amazon.es/dp/B00J4G88ZU/ref=asc_df_B00J4G88ZU31711457/?tag=go...

I don't have a spare one. I will get one if problem still persists after looking into #3 and #4. I have to say that it did behave weird sometimes. Installing things and then not working... makes me wonder.

3. & 4. I will try it

One question about this point. I'm wondering if i need the card to test these points. I'd assume that since what I'm looking for is regular power, the red light always on, all i need is the battery and ensuring once it turns on it stays on. Therefore, I'd think that the red light will stay on as long as the power works as expected as it does when I plug the pi to the power outlet by itself.

Is there anyway I can connect my outlet adapter so i can try all the different things without having to use the 9V batteries?

Thanks in advance.

--santi

piborg's picture

piborg

Wed, 02/03/2016 - 10:48

To test the 4Borg properly a supply of at least 7V would be required.
This would have to be connected into the connections for the 9V battery.
While it is possible it is a bit difficult to plug wires onto the battery connectors.

You are correct that a dip in the power should cause the red LED to turn off.
The only trouble is that if the power drop is very brief the change might be too quick to see.
If the LED appears to dim or flicker it is probably a good indication of power trouble.

It might be worth trying to clean the contacts on the SD card to see if that is the problem.
The best thing to use for this would be some contact cleaner or some isopropyl alcohol.

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