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?
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.
. 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?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
No, we did not install the caps, but I think it should not make a difference - we have built 100s of the OMB design linked on Github, this seems to be a problem we had not encountered before.
Btw, I just tested a new batch of 55 AGTs I received recently, and these were good - a bit mysterious when problems happen.
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)
Just being curious: why would you not sell the boards individually? I think you will make more money if you sell the boards yourself (and I would be happy to buy them from you at a fair price so you make a good margin), rather than I or someone else re-designs a very similar board in JLCPCB (who have the Artemis module in their inventory and provide it on their custom build PCBs by the way; I know of at least one project building a custom Artemis module based GSM communication solution that is build this way - in this case it is ok, as I guess they source the Artemis module from you, and you do not haves an equivalent board; but re-designing a JLCPCB equivalent of the AGT would be directly undercutting you…) and drops buying your products… Saying this as someone who would like to support you and the nice work you do and open source, rather than undercut you - so this is said with a good intention .
Odd
Well, keep in mind I have nearly nothing to do with the business side of things but the main reason I’d guess is margins…we only stock a few bare PCBs/spare parts/etc
But also, like you said…at least you do have outside options…you could order some PCBs and re-flow your modules to perhaps give them a new life!