Its good to be back after a long seattle winter. I’ve been hard at work 3d printing and excited to get back to this. Hope you all have been well.
Before it got rainy, I put a couple of tarps on my Farmbot and strapped them in place. I left power on for the winter because . . . maybe because I’m stupid but I rationalized it with:
a. I want to make sure it stays working
b. Being on will be extra protection against moisture
c. I’ll be able to upgrade it when new releases come out and avoid having to do multiple later.
Throughout the winter I checked on it and upgraded it.
A month or so ago I upgraded it. Then I instructed it to reflash . .then unlocked it. After that, the Farmbot was not happy (i.e. offline). I went outside and saw that the Farmbot SSID was being broadcast but that it had unexpectedly shut down. So I left it for better weather.
Today I brought the SD card in and reflashed from a fresh download. I put it back in and it booted up.
I configured it for Ethernet - again, Ethernet, I say. I only use WiFi to select Ethernet and enter my credentials. Configuration seemed fine and it rebooted.
But it never came online. I went back to it several minutes later and it was advertising the SSID again.
When I connect to the SSID it says that “Farmbot Unexpectedly Shut Down” with a reason of farmbot_ext exited 5 “shutdown”
I’ll leave the post for now in case it helps someone else. I reset a few times and switched between Ethernet and WiFi. I also checked and reset Ethernet cables and the cables between the Pi and Arduino.
At one point I had some connectivity and was getting an error that the Pi couldn’t talk to the arduino.
So, I replaced the power cable between the Pi and the Arduino (I bought a spare one because voltage used to always read Amber . . later fixed as a software bug).
Eventually I have achieved connectivity again though I wish I could say for sure what the issue was. I’ll see how things play out tomorrow. If all is solid then I’ll close this.
Although I don’t have enough information to know what happened to your bot, I can say with high certainty that it is not a power issue. Most likely, your SD card became corrupted (I would need to see an SD card dump to know for sure).
Glad you got it back online and please let me know if you hit the same issue again.
I spent some time thinking through it all and I came to the same conclusion. My best theory - in case others see it in the future is that:
During that last upgrade during the winter, the upgrade failed and image was corrupted. This part I feel confident about because the issue started right after the upgrade, to the minute.
When I re-flashed, I think the re-flash failed and I didn’t notice it. Its easy to miss this with Balena.
Later in the day, I changed my Windows settings to NOT automatically open when a new drive is inserted. I did this because I noticed I had extra Explorer windows open asking me to format my drive. I believe this interfered with the burning process.
So when I reflashed with my updated Autoplay settings (for explorer to do nothing when I insert a USB), I believe I got a clean re-flash.
Love the picture.
Were the bearings ok after sitting idle in the cold/damp for so long? I chickened out and removed the gantry for the winter. Perhaps I will leave it on next winter…
I think it’s worth re-emphasizing do not use liquid lubricants! This seems to only be explicitly mentioned in a troubleshooting section for Why is my FarmBot not moving? (Test the gantry, bullet #4)
If you need to add a lubricant to lower the resistance at the V-wheels, use a dry lubricant such as powdered graphite. A dry lubricant will not collect dust or dirt and will not gum the wheels or bearings like liquid lubricants or grease will. Do not use a liquid lubricant on the belts, pulleys, or v-wheels.
Good point @mdingena - for extra clarification, when selecting a spray graphite lubricant, ensure that the bottle clearly states that it leaves the surface dry / non-tacky; not all spray lubricants do this. Testing on a small patch before proceeding is helpful here. If it is still greasy, or causing damage to the plastics- do not proceed and use a different product.
