I am using a Notecarrier F with Notecard Cell+WiFi powered from a 5000mAh Li-Ion battery (the ones sold by Blues). During a stretch of very little sun and therefore no recharge from the Voltaic Systems 2 Watt 6 Volt Small Solar Panel - ETFE, the battery voltage went too low and the system stopped working. When powered by USB now, the Notecard continually flashes a red LED at approximately 2Hz. The code builds and uploads just fine from VSCode, but the flashing pattern doesn’t change. From this forum post (What do the Notecard LED blink patterns mean?), it seems that it is stuck “Device Firmware Update Mode”. However, these were recently purchased and from what I can tell have a fairly recent version already installed.
Any help understanding why this is happening is appreciated! (…and how to get out of this seemingly stuck point).
Some info from the most recent Notehub sync:
The body of the _health.qo file reads:
{“text”:“boot (brown-out & hard reset [16689])”,“voltage”:2.8515625}
From the JSON data in the _session.qo files …some information omitted…
“firmware_notecard”: “{"org":"Blues Wireless","product":"Notecard","target":"u5","version":"notecard-u5-7.3.1","ver_major":7,"ver_minor":3,"ver_patch":1,"ver_build":16689,"built":"Jun 21 2024 17:25:39"}”, …some information omitted…
“voltage”: 2.793
I believe the information provided in that forum post is no longer 100% valid. Usually a red blink means reading/writing flash or serial/I2C comms to/from the Notecard.
Can you clarify if the Notecard is functional now after the low voltage shutdown? Are you able to connect to it over USB and send requests?
I have not been successful in connecting to the Notecard via USB using the In-Browser Terminal or via installing the Notecard CLI. I still need to try it on another computer in case my USB adapter I am using is the culprit, but it seems at the moment I’m unable to connect to the Notecard.
That’s definitely concerning. You may want to look at these instructions for recovering a bricked Notecard (though it would be surprising if the Notecard locked up just because of low voltage).
It seems that the Notecard has bigger issues. I went through the process to put it in bootloader mode, but it still wasn’t showing up as a device when trying to connect via USB through the in-browser terminal. I verified the cable and adapter was working fine by easily connecting to another Notecarrier on a different Notecarrier using this method, then swapped the non-functioning Notecard into the new Notecarrier and again, had no luck seeing it as a USB device. Does this mean it is completely dead, or are there other options to try and recover it? It is still unclear what may have caused this initially to happening. It just keeps blinking a red LED at 2-3 Hz when plugged in via USB.