Artemis Global Tracker (AGT) does not boot up after uploading firmware

Development Boards Artemis
1

We have purchased 33 AGTs to create the OpenMetBuoy (OMB) described in the following page.

We found 4 among 33 AGTs does not boot up after uploading the firmware. During the update, the orange LED labeled as RX0 blinked. The AGT, however, showed no LED blinking after the update. We couldn’t see anything from the serial monitor on the Arduino IDE, either.

Is there anything we can do to recover the AGTs with the booting up problem?

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Seems like this is a similar issue to: Multiple bad Artemis AGTs - #6 by TS-Russell .

As a note, I have had the same issue myself; I think last time I built a batch of 35 OpenMetBuoys (OMB, based on the AGT) that I had a couple of “bad” AGTs that I discarded.

  • it would be really nice if SF can use this to improve QC; maybe SF could get these shipped back for inspection?
  • The AGT is the main expensive part of the OMB, and on the AGT, the Iridium modem is the expensive part. But the good thing is, the iridium modem is easy to take off the AGT motherboard. Hence the following question: could SF also commercialize the “naked AGT motherboard”, without the modem? I would myself always add in a couple of “naked AGT motherboards” in my large scale AGT orders, so that if I have any malfunction on an AGT, I can just swap the AGT motherboard, and either discard the defective AGT motherboard and / or ship it back to SF, but keep the expensice iridium modem. This would be a very good way to reduce costs and uncertainties given the QC issues on the AGT, both for SF and for OMB users :slight_smile: . SF team: is this something you could offer? What could the price for a “naked AGT motherboard, i.e. AGT without the iridium modem” be when bought together with a bunch of “normal” AGTs?
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Did you install the caps? Eh, we’re unlikely to sell the bare boards, but the eagle files are available and you could fairly easily or them from an online pcb fab shop (that also populates them) and order some for cheap…the main tricky part will be that you need the SparkFun Artemis Module - Low Power Machine Learning BLE Cortex-M4F - WRL-15484 - SparkFun Electronics which we do sell individually, and you would need to place that component DIY (or all of them…most PCB fabs send stencils if you want them)

We do have a 30-day warranty on all products Return Policy - SparkFun Electronics; be sure to test all units when you get them and alert us if any are deemed defective