Current state:
Tested:
Result is always the same: no boot and no UART output.
How exactly have you connected uart? On photo it is not connected. Rx/tx need to be crossed,3.3v and gnd are necessary.
Afaik green led is only lighting when system booted to some state (based on image used).
HI @frank-w UART wiring is confirmed: TX/RX crossed, GND connected, 3.3V USB-TTL adapter. Terminal: 115200 8N1, no flow control.
Tested again with NO SD card inserted. Still absolutely no UART output (not a single character).
LAN LEDs remain off. Green LED stays solid regardless of image or no SD.
This suggests the board never reaches BootROM stage.
You use the debug uart connector next to usb port? On photo this is not connected
Holding the board like this i(specially at wintertime) you can kill it with static electricity.
I just received my BPI R4 and it has the same condition. It’s dead. Can you check if a component underneath gets too hot as soon as you connect the board to power?
HI The component’s temperature is not normal.
What temperature range do your devices operate within approximately? The R4 board that is capable of functioning seems to have a relatively high temperature as well.
Hit a similar situation. After a year of use, I found my BPI-R4-Main v1.1 in an unresponsive state. I have a semi-permanent UART cable hooked up for periodic troubleshooting. Now there is never output, no matter what. Unit has been in the aluminum case since unboxing with heatsink compound between the NVMe and case for heat transfer.
At power on the LEDs for PWR, eth3, and G all switch on with G almost immediately turning off.
Power at XH-4Pin is 5v/12v. Voltages at 0v9, 1v1, 1v2, 3v3 measure nominal. VCORE and VPROC are ~0.875, TP16 is 1.787, TP17 ranges from 60 to 80 mV
Any thoughts?
Are you running OpenWrt or a derived distribution? Check if your R4 is stuck in “recovery mode” like in @SpectreDev case:
OpenWRT directly (though re-compiled to include the NVMe driver). Interestingly, while there has been no change on the UART*, or the front facing LEDs (only red), the LED pattern on the Ethernet ports has changed. Previously it was just eth3, now it is eth0, eth1, and eth3 which are on.
*to be clear, It continues to be completely unresponsive to input or output regardless of which adapter I use. All adapters have been tested with a second BPI-R4 I had as a backup.
try GitHub - rmandrad/openwrt at bpi-r4-uart2
there’s a lot of debugging code but uart2 works on the kernel and u-boot (only uart2-tx though)
The uart2 pins are are on the right 6,8,10 (GND,UART0-TX,UART0-RX - make sure you don’t plug in the 5.0V pins!!!)
Press the reset button see if the blue light comes on in a few mins and then see if you can access the openwrt recovery
Alas, neither UART2 or the reset button have been useful, though i did see that the “mPCIe 12v” briefly lights up VERY brightly when inserting power over USB-C. This is interesting because I’ve been using a 12v barrel jack up till this point.
You meant you can’t “make use of the reset button trick” to get into “recovery mode” as SpectreDev ? Have you checked after power on, R4 already automagically in recovery mode? For example, by pinging its default IP 192.168.1.1 or trying to SSH into it ? I presume you checked already.
Another thing to try is to disable initialisation of early console in the kernel. That’s if the issue is only a broken debug port that caused kernel failure to boot.
Good afternoon, I was testing on NAND Banana Pi R4, on which UART was working without any problems. While the image was loading and watching through UART how everything was going correctly, suddenly the log stops, and since then it hasn’t worked again.
I had it disassembled to move it to the new case I bought that is bigger and has better ventilation.
As I said, it no longer shows any log. I’ve compared it with another Banana Pi R4 that I have - first the red light turns on, then the green, and immediately the blue starts blinking, and the image loads.
On this one, when it turns on, the red light and green light turn on at the same time directly - completely different from the other Banana Pi R4.
Do you know what could have happened to it, since it doesn’t give any log - no log in SD, NAND, or eMMC? It’s as if it had died.
It’s not a power supply issue - I’ve tested it with all 5 power supplies I have for the other Bananas, including the BPI-Pro, the 12V 5A one, as well as a laptop power adapter, 65W Type C charger, 20V, 3.25A, 45W, USB C, PD phone, MacBook, ASUS, ZenBook, Lenovo, Dell, Xiaomi, Air, HP, Sony that I also have, and THIS OTHER ONE: Reletech 65W USB C laptop charger power adapter for Lenovo ThinkPad, HP, Chromebook, Yoga, Dell, ASUS, Acer Type C power adapter.
Is there any way to connect through another UART method? I connected to the bottom of the board at the solder points where UART is, and then all strange characters come out but nothing clear. I’m leaving you a photo so you can see how when turned on, both lights stay fixed.
Is there any image or any way to load some type of file? It’s as if either it had a short circuit or as if the NAND had been erased.
I’ve touched the entire board and it doesn’t give off heat. I installed the SFP+RJ45 from Banana Pi R4 and it does heat up, but it doesn’t give an IP. I set it manually but it doesn’t get bytes, it doesn’t detect the network.
By the way, I didn’t have the BE14000 installed.
The fan turns on immediately along with the red and green lights.
Thanks for your help. I’ve seen this post but I don’t understand what needs to be done. If you can help me, I would appreciate it.
Best regards
how long had you this board working? at which point did log stop? are you sure you use 3.3V output on the uart adapter? for using another uart it is necessary to change code on each part of bootchain (TF-A,uboot,linux). @rmandrad did some tests for it and got it partially working. without any uart log it is nearly impossible to fix a problem as you/we do not know where the problem is.
It is very easy to destroy something by static electricity.
Good evening, the UART had been on the same board since I bought it - Order placed on: Oct 7, 2024, so it had never been changed. It’s easy for something to have happened with static electricity, which was strange since I had only removed the SFP and LAN parts and the top cover, and I was testing the NAND that was installed, and in the middle of the log it stopped on the screen as if it had frozen. I rebooted and not even this came out anymore:
F0: 102B 0000
FA: 1042 0000
FA: 1042 0000 [0200]
F9: 1041 0000
F3: 1001 0000 [0200]
F3: 1001 0000
F6: 380E 5012
F5: 0000 0000
V0: 0000 0000 [0001]
00: 0000 0000
BP: 0600 0041 [0000]
G0: 1190 0000
EC: 0000 0000 [3000]
MK: 0000 0000 [0000]
T0: 0000 013F [0101]
Jump to BL
So it seems the board is dead. When rebooting, nothing comes out, there’s no communication with the board, so I disassembled it and what I did with the UART was to put the board upside down and connect the GND to its place, the TXD and RXD in their place on the back side. Then it turns on and strange characters constantly appear.
What’s more, when it turns on, as I mentioned, it does so directly with the green and red lights and fan all running at the same time.
I check another Banana Pi R4 board with 4GB of RAM and I see that first the red turns on, second the green blinking, and then the blue blinking, later the fan.
So either my board’s NAND was erased for some reason I don’t know, since no component gets hot, or it was due to static electricity death.
The strange thing is that it tries to recognize the network but never manages to recognize it and no bytes come out. I set a manual IP and put an image that I used at the beginning to flash to NAND because it had just what was needed, and it doesn’t do anything.
Additionally, I have another BPI R4 with 8GB of RAM + 2 Banana Pi Pro-8X - I tested all the power supplies with the same result.
In this thread I had read about @rmandrad and I wanted to know if it worked and if it had to be compiled with a special .config to try to be able to write to NAND and thus be able to access everything again.
If you know of any method, I would appreciate it, and if not, well, I have a dead Banana Pi R4 with 4GB of RAM, no problem, since as I informed you, in total I had 5, now 4.
But I’m very stubborn and if you think it can be recovered, I’m all ears.
Thanks