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New user, startup issues
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I have a Vitros RP Zero W basic kit that I had in mind to try for some new projects. While far from a programmer, I have some ancient experience in BASIC and FORTRAN and more recently have played with C++ in an Arduino environment, adding some features to a BitX radio. I cannot seem to get even started with the RPi zero!
I have the kit-supplied power supply along with a USB hub to connect a USB keyboard and a mouse, and an HDMI video cable to attach to a monitor. I flashed a 32GB card several times using different programs, most recently Etcher, and flashing the full 2021-01-11-raspios-buster-armhf-full image. It verified OK. I have also tried a few smaller files, but the results are the same in that I cannot completely get going. Sometimes the pi just freezes...no green light, and nothing on the screen but an immovable mouse arrow. Sometimes it gets all the way to the desktop, where I enter a new password, location info, and sometimes rarely even as far as connecting to my WiFi. But, it always freezes, usually the mouse failing to respond at some point, or everything just locking up. I can power off...wait a bit, and power on and it may start or even seem to be getting somewhere, but it never actually is stable and gets to the point of being able to be used. I changed flashing from using the SD slot on my Win10 computer because it seemed a little flaky...sometimes saying the card was write protected (it isn't)...to a USB-connected removable drive, but the same thing happens at some point in the attempt to get started. What is wrong here? =Vic= |
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Mark Griffith
Your SD card is probably bad. Try another. If that doesn't work, then perhaps you have a bad Pi. Try another, they are cheap. This is rare, but I have seen it happen. Let us know how it works out. Mark KD0QYN
On Saturday, January 30, 2021, 3:09:51 AM CST, Vic WA4THR via groups.io <vhklein@...> wrote:
I have a Vitros RP Zero W basic kit that I had in mind to try for some new projects. While far from a programmer, I have some ancient experience in BASIC and FORTRAN and more recently have played with C++ in an Arduino environment, adding some features to a BitX radio. I cannot seem to get even started with the RPi zero! I have the kit-supplied power supply along with a USB hub to connect a USB keyboard and a mouse, and an HDMI video cable to attach to a monitor. I flashed a 32GB card several times using different programs, most recently Etcher, and flashing the full 2021-01-11-raspios-buster-armhf-full image. It verified OK. I have also tried a few smaller files, but the results are the same in that I cannot completely get going. Sometimes the pi just freezes...no green light, and nothing on the screen but an immovable mouse arrow. Sometimes it gets all the way to the desktop, where I enter a new password, location info, and sometimes rarely even as far as connecting to my WiFi. But, it always freezes, usually the mouse failing to respond at some point, or everything just locking up. I can power off...wait a bit, and power on and it may start or even seem to be getting somewhere, but it never actually is stable and gets to the point of being able to be used. I changed flashing from using the SD slot on my Win10 computer because it seemed a little flaky...sometimes saying the card was write protected (it isn't)...to a USB-connected removable drive, but the same thing happens at some point in the attempt to get started. What is wrong here? =Vic= |
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VIC-
Since you have a W10 machine. Eliminate the USB hub, Keyboard and mouse, by plugging it into the W10 machine and test. Is the mouse arrow frozen or is the mouse missing? You really don't know till you try it elsewhere. 32Gb SD card on a RPI ZERO-W is a bit much when trying to get a minimal operational unit. The operating system is far less than 2GB... Try a smaller SD card - USE SD formatter... Not the QUICK FORMAT.. let it write the entire card.. on the W10 machine you can use DISK GENIUS to shake down that SD card.. Just be careful as DISK GENIUS can blow up a lot of stuff if you are not careful. VILROS is a good company and what ever you discover, if you got it from them they should cover it. Using a good DDVM check the supply voltage on the PRI ZERO-W... Also on your phone WIFI Analyzer or (device scan on your router) may shed light if the CPU is running and you have WIFI.. Regards... Larry W8LM |
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I have had power supplies that are too low of current cause same issue, freezing, rebooting etc. if you’ve got another 5VDC
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supply that has higher amperage, try that. Good luck JP On Jan 30, 2021, at 11:20 AM, Larry Macionski via groups.io <am_fm_radio@...> wrote:
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Perry Ogletree
Use the "Raspberry Pi Imager" software available from the official Web site. It handles all your SD (Flash and SSD as well) tasks to create bootable images. Make sure any USB hub is a powered hub with its own power supply. The Zero can not supply enough current for some USB devices and hubs. Make sure you have a class 10/U1 SD card. The Samsung and San Disk "Extreme" cards work well. There are lots of cheap, questionable, SD cards that are trash for use with a Pi.
Power bumps caused by overload or intermittent connections will corrupt the SD card, especially cheap ones. Perry K4PWO |
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N5XMT
Size of the SD card has nothing to do with which Pi it's in, or which version of the PiOS you are using. It's the quality of the card that matters. I have 2 Pi zero W's running 128G SanDisk cards and no different than 8G with getting them running. You also have no need to format the cards. an image write overwrites EVERY bit on the card, creating the format and data structure of the original image. On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 11:06 AM JP McGinley <j.p.mcg@...> wrote:
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Thanks for all the replies. I did send a note to Vilros with some questions.
I was checking to see if i had any empty MicroSD cards around, and all I had were either double the size or too small. The card I am using is a 32GB Samsung EVO select and it does pass the verification when I write to it. Is that good enough for this application? Among the imagers I used was the Raspberry Pi imager on their website. It didn't act any different from the others as far as performance. However, I do notice something a bit odd. When I reinsert the SD card into the desktop, now there is a "new" empty drive showing and saying it needs to be formatted, one letter higher than the Boot drive on the card. I saw that before and thought it meant the card was bad, so it was reformatted and a new image copied over. It looked fine before I used it in the Pi, no phantom drive, so I wonder if the Pi is creating that new drive on the card? Although I think I have done this a couple of times, I may try erasing and reformatting the SD card again. I started the process before I had an HDMI cable to connect to the monitor, so I was trying to use the built-in WiFi and run "headless". I added the needed files to the SD card (adding and empty SSH file and the filled out wpa_supplicant.conf file for my WiFi), but when trying to run the green LED on the pi would flash for a while, then go steady, but no signal ever showed up on the network. That's when I decided to wait for the USB hub and try to run it directly. On the one time it got as far as logging on to the WiFi, I did find it on the network. I'll look at trying the Pi plugged in to the USB port, if I understand that technique, and good thought about watching the WiFi on the phone monitor. The power supply is the one supplied by Vilros, but another good idea to monitor the voltage, although nothing seems to be dimming under use. Among my many start attempts were efforts plugging only the mouse or only the keyboard in to the Pi, in case the load was too much. Those didn't make any difference except an inability to either select things or type in things when needed. =Vic= |
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Jim WB9QPM
Hi Vic,
After you flash the card and copy the ssh and suplicant files to the boot partition. Put the card in the pi and apply power to the pi. On first boot it should resize the linux partition and reboot. Are you using the Buster os (lite or full)? If so it created a small 'boot' partition that is readable by windows and a linux partition that windows thinks is blank. The 'blank' partition contains the linux files, so don't format it after flashing. Post your results. 73, Jim |
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I think the OS creates the new drive from unused part of the flash or SD drive. You can tell it to make sure your system uses the whole device. (terminal) sudo raspi-config [enter] The option is in Advanced. There's also a GUI in the Raspberry software. 73 Thanks for all the replies. I did send a note to Vilros with some questions. |
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OK, that explains it. I did see a message flash on the screen on the initial attempt to boot that something was being created or resized. I am using the full Buster, as far as I know. I sort of backpedaled this project for now until some new stuff comes in next week. I found a way to accomplish some of what I was thinking of doing using an Android ap and was playing with that today.
=Vic= |
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Mark Griffith
How in the world are you "adding files" to the Raspbian image or editing files when the thing won't boot up? This is all pretty simple. Get a NEW SD card, 32GB or even 128GB if you want to have that much space. It's not a money issue, a 16GB decent card from WalMart is only about $8. DON'T format it. That doesn't make any difference as you are applying a completely new image on there and Windows formatting doesn't make any difference at all. I have built a couple hundred SD cards with different Raspbian images and have had problems with pre-formatted cards. Don't do it, not necessary. Connect it to a HDMI TV and a USB keyboard/mouse. Apply power. The RED LED should never blink. If it does, and randomly blinks, the power supply is bad. Get a new one. If it is steady on all the time, this is good. Make sure you have the correct OS. I'm assuming you are trying to boot the latest Raspbian OS for the Pi. If not, you'll have to figure it out. If there are errors during the boot, the problem should be obvious. If they are random errors, or it boots and then hangs or other weird stuff, get a NEW Pi Zero. It's only $10. Try all that and see if it works. Once booted then you can set up your WiFi from the GUI or from the command line if you want, enable SSH, etc. Read the Pi docs. Mark KD0QYN Thanks for all the replies. I did send a note to Vilros with some questions. |
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N5XMT
That drive windows says needs formatted is the root filesystem for the pi image. Don't reformat it. It's normal, as windows cannot read a Linux ext4 filesystem
32g is fine. Plenty of room
Thanks for all the replies. I did send a note to Vilros with some questions. |
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gparted should be in your toolbox. 73 On Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 12:08 N5XMT <dacooley@...> wrote:
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N5XMT
Something to keep in mind is that some USB keyboards draw quite a bit of power. More than the pi zero's can supply thru their USB ports. Your best bet is to run headless, and for desktop use VNC.
The easiest way to see if it's on the network, is to log into your router and go to "connected devices". May be called something similar depending on who makes it. And look for the pi there. It will give you the ip address. Also, Pi's don't do ipv6 addressing very well, so edit cmdline.txt on the sd card with notepad++ and add ipv6.disable=1 at the end. Don't hit return anywhere.
When you create your wpa_supplicant.conf, make sure as well to use notepad++, and regular notepad, wordpad etc all add linefeeds at the end of each line and Linux doesn't play nice with DOS formatted text.
OK, that explains it. I did see a message flash on the screen on the initial attempt to boot that something was being created or resized. I am using the full Buster, as far as I know. I sort of backpedaled this project for now until some new stuff comes in next week. I found a way to accomplish some of what I was thinking of doing using an Android ap and was playing with that today. |
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Follow up for the record. I did find and try another SD card with pretty much the same results...the Pi would lock up at random points during the start and never got running. I ordered a new Raspberry Pi Zero W through Amazon Prime with a promised Tuesday delivery, then was emailed that it would be Wednesday, then emailed that it was delivered on Thursday, then it actually arrived on Friday. I moved the original 32GB card over and reconnected everything: HDMI monitor, USB hub with a mouse and keyboard, and using the supplied power supply. It booted up perfectly, logged into my WiFi, and downloaded all the updates. Hooray! Now to start learning how to use it.
Incidentally, I contacted Vilros about the time I was ordering a new Pi and they responded the next day and suggested similar tests, which I reported on. Once I could find and give them the order number (it was a gift, so I had to go back to the giver), they sent an complete new package with a return label for the original one. The replacement arrived today. =Vic= |
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