ZumSpot Boot Loop

Help and support for ZUMSpot Hardware
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KE8KXR
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:54 pm

ZumSpot Boot Loop

Post by KE8KXR »

Hello All

Just received my ZumSpot from an online retailer, unfortunately it’s not going well

The SD card came images from the retailer so all I was supposed to do was power up, wait 2-3 mint and perform initial setup. The SSID pi-star never appears on any of my devices. Fortunately I have a mini HDMI connected to a TV so I attached it and was able to see the typical Linus boot scree, over and over. It scrolls really fast, the last line before rebooting is something about LSAB font and keyboard map, then black screen followed by reboot again.

I tried downloading the latest PIStar and making an image from it in case something was corrupt, same results.
I’d like to try some previous versions of PiStar to get control of the hardware but can only find current versions in the website. Does anyone know if previous erosions are available to download? Does anyone think it may be an issue between newest PiStar and the firmware version on the ZumSpot hat?

Thank you for any and all suggestions or information

Joe
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KE0FHS
Posts: 1122
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2018 8:40 pm
Location: Colorado, USA
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Re: ZumSpot Boot Loop

Post by KE0FHS »

Hi Joe,

What is your exact setup: What kind of Raspberry Pi is the ZUMspot mounted on? What is the version number of the ZUMspot? What kind of power supply are you using? Is the hotspot in some kind of case? Can you double check that it is correctly mounted on the RPi's GPIO header?

Any chance you have a spare microSD card on hand that you could burn an image of Raspbian to? Then you could take the ZUMspot off the RPi and just test your RPi to make sure it's okay.

Did you order the ZUMspot from Ham Radio Outlet?
73, Toshen, KE0FHS
Playing with Pi-Star (unofficial notes about setting up and using Pi-Star):
https://amateurradionotes.com/pi-star.htm
KE8KXR
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:54 pm

Re: ZumSpot Boot Loop

Post by KE8KXR »

Hello KE0FHS,

I figured it out about 30 minutes ago! :D

Insufficient power supply. My guess it the boot process was attempting to turn on RF which drew more power and caused a reboot. Had the same sort of thing happen to me earlier this year trying to use a CB on insufficient power supply, every time I PTT’d, the radio reset.

Found a more powerful supply and it booted up and the pi-star-setup SSID was available in about 90 seconds.

Live and learn I guess!

Thank you for the reply! Hopefully I’d someone else experiences this they run across this.

73
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