Hi Guys,
I finally got my Wisblock Starter Kit order yesterday and was excited to start working with it.
My kit is the below.
RAK19007+RAK4631-R LoRaWAN and LoRa Nordic nRF52840 BLE Core with RUI3 / US915
I hooked it up directly to my pc to power it. And I have a red Blinking indicator which tells me it is getting power. No other LED’s light up at all.
I went over to the Meshtastic website to flash it with the latest Meshtastic firmware but the module wont even load DFU.
I attempted updating the bootloader using the guide on the website via command prompt but the device times out when attempting to manually push the bootloader update (I am using the correct COM port). This was attempted on 2 different computers to ensure it was not an issue with my main computer.
I am fairly new to this so not sure if there are any other things I can try, or did I get a dud?
If you connect the device to your computer, try to double push the reset button to get into UF2 mode. A new drive RAK4631 should pop up.
Then try to flash the UF2 file provided by Meshtastic.
Hi, thanks for the prompt response. I tried this a number of times on both computers, but no luck. No new drives are mounted. Double pressing, long pressing, nothing works there
I also did as was suggested in a prior thread here with a similar issue and removed the rak module and readded it in case it was not placed correctly.
Having same problem. Flashed meshtastic via web flasher, everything was ok, left it for a while and then found module unresponsive via bluetooth.
After pluging module in, it’s recognized by system but in 4-5 seconds disconnects. So no DFU and unable to flash any firmware directly.
[252335.264419] usb 3-6: new full-speed USB device number 50 using xhci_hcd
[252335.393012] usb 3-6: New USB device found, idVendor=239a, idProduct=8029, bcdDevice= 1.00
[252335.393025] usb 3-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[252335.393030] usb 3-6: Product: WisCore RAK4631 Board
[252335.393033] usb 3-6: Manufacturer: RAKwireless
[252335.393036] usb 3-6: SerialNumber: <here's modules SN>
[252340.110827] usb 3-6: USB disconnect, device number 50
When you double push the reset button, can you get the device into UF2 mode?
If that works, try the Meshtastic nRF52 Flash eraser, then flash the Meshtastic firmware again.
Can you flash the attached HEX file with DAPLink and check if anything changes. Test-Recovery-RAK4631.hex (2.4 MB)
This is a test firmware (not Meshtastic) that tests LED’s Flash read/write, attached modules and LoRa (connection to transceiver only). It includes Bootloader, Softdevice and application.
Debug output over USB with 115200/8/N/1 to a Serial terminal (e.g. Coolterm)
Do you have a RAK14000 EPD display connected? If yes, remove it first.
Thanks, it got signs of life.
Red and blue LEDs are on, green’s flashing. USB tty shows nothing. Are baseboard TTLs levels 5v tolerate? Right now I use 3.3v. Should I try it? Core installed into RAK19003. BTW, also, I have RAK19007 — the same.
Still, I’ve got interesting behaviour: when I connect via baseboard’s type c, it’s still drops USB connection in 4-5 seconds and green and blue LEDs are stopping to work. When I connect RX and TX to my TTL board, VCC LEDS are blinking continously, looks like it works ok. What’s more, if I connect additionally baseboard type c and double click reset button, green LED slowly flashes and DFU mode starts. I see RAK4631 partition. I don’t flash it for now, i can do smth to test and debug that module.
Hi guys, sorry I never followed up on solution I received for this.
The module I had was the RAK4631-R core, which requires conversion to be able to be used with meshtastic. While I did follow the conversion instructions as they were, I needed also needed a file that was on the first steps of the overall FAQ guide, which had a similar name to the one on the conversion steps. “adafruit-nrfutil” and “nrfutil” are not the same. Once I got that, I was able to convert, connect and flash appropriately.
@top4ek
You say “TTL converter”.
The RAK4631 is not sending anything over the Serial1/Serial2 UARTs, it is only working over USB for boot/firmware upgrade/debug output.
If you get Bootmode try to reflash the Meshtastic UF2 file, or better, first flash the test firmware to see if it boots up with it normally.
Here is the test firmware as UF2 file. Mesh_Test_V1.1.2.uf2.zip (163.8 KB)
Oh, I got it(about TTL), I thought I need to look into RX-TX from motherboard. ok.
Not much results:
New test UF2 firmware succesfully flashed, but there’s nothing, when I try to connect to serial port(not motherboard’s UART at this time). And in 4-5 seconds — disconnect, green LED stops rapidly flashing.
Then Mestastic firmware was flashed via DFU — 4-5 seconds.
Tried trick with RX-TX: just connected em to TTL board and RAK starts and boots ok for a long time. There’s still nothing in logs with test firmware, but I was able to see logs from meshtastic. Unfortunately, when I tried to pair it via BLE, nothing happened, module looked like frozen, but still — I saw pairing request in logs.
Yep. Tried this core with RAK19007 and other cores with this RAK19003 as first steps to figure smth out. Looks like exact that core chip has some fault. All other cores works fine but I didn’t reflashed them with the latest meshtastic yet — some worries after flashing this core. I hope it’s just this core only
Did you ever use one of these Meshtastic enclosures that have a switch to disable the GNSS module manually? (Just asking).
It is strange that devices with the Meshtastic firmware show problems. I have RAK4631’s here that are from 2020, so far I never burned one of them to death.
Nope, all I have is bare “starter kits”, and only this one don’t want to work. I’ll try to flash latest firmware to second module. I don’t think it’s a problem after flashing. I have an idea that something burned when I touched module with bare hands without grounding myself or something like that because I live in a appartment block where HUGE electrical pickup.