Wisblock suddenly stopped transmitting

Hello all! New to meshtastic here. I just got a brand new wisblock meshtastic starter kit with the rak4631 module. Connected a 5200 mah lithuim ion battery to the module, hooked up to a USBC solar panel, sealed in an ip68 container, and attached to a 5.8dbi antenna outside my house. Was working great for 2 hours after full setup, but then the device stopped transmitting bluetooth.

Took the module off of my roof and inspected. Green light is blinking normally and boot mode works fine, but no matter how may times I flash it with meshtastic, I can not see the unit using bluetooth or through LoRa using my heltec. Attempts to open in serial mode fail, as the device only connects in serial mode when the green light blinks.

Any thoughts as to how I can diagnose this?

Welcome to the forum @Xen0s

We are not developing or maintaining the Meshtastic firmware, for questions about Meshtastic, please contact them directly.

Two things you can try:

Use the Meshtastic nRF52 factory reset firmware, then flash again the Meshtastic firmware and check if it works.

Use the attached WisBlock HW tester firmware, collect the output on the USB and share here for a check on potential hardware problems.

Thank you for getting back to me. I tried a factory reset and flash to meshtastic again and the device began working as anticipated. Waited 24 hours, then reassembled, and the device continued to operate normally. About 2 hours ago, the device stopped working with the same issue. It has a slow green blinking light and shows up on Bluetooth as a series of characters that change over time (for example, it currently reads as “D4:0E:8D:99:38:F4” and will not accept connection requests).

Considering that my issue sounds similar to the bootloop issue discussed in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1gvzk1r/bootloop_wisblock/

I’ll get back to you to see whether the low power firmware that you linked in the referenced thread resolves this issue.

Okay all, after a several-week test I covered all my bases and have an answer for you all. The process linked in the forum above WORKED to solve this firmware issue. I will quote the original author:

" Another issue we encountered was corrupted firmware. After several weeks of operation, a device with the RAK4630 suddenly stopped working. Resetting or flashing new firmware didn’t help. I found a similar issue discussed here: RAK4631 Keeps Restarting. Based on the recommendations from that thread, we followed these steps:

  1. Flash a factory reset firmware (called nfr_erase.uf2 and can be found on Meshtastic’s flasher website).
  2. Flash the low-power firmware (the forum thread provides a link).
  3. Flash the Meshtastic firmware.

If we skipped the low-power firmware step, the restart loop persisted."

The “low-power” firmware mentioned above is THIS firmware from the referenced forum entry —> WisBlock_LowPower_V1.0.0_2024.02.26.10.37.39.uf2.zip (150.2 KB)

I completed this process once and no longer had an issue! Remember to choose “erase and flash” when flashing Meshtastic to your rak4631!

Further troubleshooting that did not yield any results:

  1. Tested battery for undervolting at low temperatures. Below 32 degrees I still saw steady voltage.
  2. Tested solar panel for surges or fluctuations that may be causing the unit to stop running. Solar panel output 3-5v steadily.
  3. Tested repeatedly connecting/disconnecting Bluetooth to attempt to cause an internal firmware failure. No issues caused by this test after reflash process above.

Hope this helps anyone who was confused as I was about this issue!