RTK Facet mosaic L-Band boot loop

GPS/GNSS Enclosed Products
1

Have a new RTK Facet mosaic L-Band that appears to be in a boot loop. I did some initial setup and got my phone paired, and went out with SW maps and recorded some points, and experimented with RTK corrections via the phone.

I was attempting to put the facet into config mode so i could connect via wifi to go through the config menus. The facet would not go into config mode. When i stopped the menu on ‘config’ after about 8 seconds, it returns to the main screen.

On boot, i get the normal boot sequence, and then the unit displays:
base started
survey started
and after a few seconds it reboots.

When the device powers up/boots, no serial port is getting presented to my PC. Also when plugged into USB, the green led for charging does not come on.

I did have a serial console (via usb hooked up when it happened, and this is the capture from that).

=======================
Board ADC ID (mV): 2749

LittleFS Started
Using profile #0
PSRAM Size (bytes): 4194304
I2C Devices:
0x36 - MAX17048 Fuel Gauge
0x3D - SSD1306 OLED Driver
Display started

SparkPNT RTK Facet mosaicX5 v2.1

Reset reason: ESP_RST_PANIC
GNSS mosaic-X5 online
mosaic-X5 firmware: 4.14.4
Profile ‘Profile1’ loaded
Fuel gauge configuration complete
mosaic configuration maintained
No GNSS date/time available for system RTC.
Bluetooth SPP and BLE broadcasting as: Facet mosaicX5 Base-702E
Skipping mosaic Base configuration
STATE_BASE_NOT_STARTED → STATE_BASE_TEMP_SETTLE
MCP73833 Charger: battery is charging
Batt (88%): Voltage: 4.17V Charging: 17.06%/hr
System time set to: Sunday, July 06 2025 19:52:03
Base Mode - SIV: 16
Waiting for Horz Accuracy < 1.00 (m): 0.00, SIV: 16
STATE_BASE_TEMP_SETTLE → STATE_BASE_TEMP_SURVEY_STARTED, 2025-07-06 19:52:03.628
Guru Meditation Error: Core 1 panic’ed (LoadProhibited). Exception was unhandled.

Core 1 register dump:
PC : 0x400e0171 PS : 0x00060830 A0 : 0x800e01d8 A1 : 0x3ffd3ab0
A2 : 0x3ffd3b18 A3 : 0x00000000 A4 : 0x000000ff A5 : 0x3ffbdce8
A6 : 0x3f4010f5 A7 : 0x00000003 A8 : 0x00000000 A9 : 0x3ffd3a90
A10 : 0x3ffd3b18 A11 : 0x3ffd3ab4 A12 : 0x0000000a A13 : 0x00000000
A14 : 0x3ffde6b0 A15 : 0x00000000 SAR : 0x0000000a EXCCAUSE: 0x0000001c
EXCVADDR: 0x00000004 LBEG : 0x400855c5 LEND : 0x400855cd LCOUNT : 0x00000027

Backtrace: 0x400e016e:0x3ffd3ab0 0x400e01d5:0x3ffd3ae0 0x40100723:0x3ffd3b10 0x4010ff39:0x3ffd3b50 0x40148a60:0x3ffd3b70 0x4009b27a:0x3ffd3b90

ELF file SHA256: ceaa2453535fbd05

E (7607) esp_core_dump_flash: Core dump flash config is corrupted! CRC=0x7bd5c66f instead of 0x0
E (7616) esp_core_dump_elf: Elf write init failed!
E (7620) esp_core_dump_common: Core dump write failed with error=-1
Rebooting…

Now the device is stuck in boot, error, reboot loop

2

Hi John (@draakken ),

Apologies for the hassle. This is a known issue with firmware v2.1 - documented here. It has been solved in the RTK Everywhere Firmware - Release Candidate (RC March_07_2025 onwards) - but hasn’t yet made it into a full firmware release. The solution is to upgrade the firmware - please follow the link below:

Apologies again for the hassle,
Best wishes,
Paul

1 Like
3

Having a released firmware that if the end user selects one of the 2 main operating modes (base or rover) will render the device non-usable is a fairly critical fault. Sparkfun really should pull that firmware release, or at least not be shipping the mosaic facet with it installed.

Also the documentation needs to be updated. From the other thread it seems you need to double click to select a menu item, which was not what the instructions here Configure with WiFi - SparkFun RTK Product Manual seem to tell you to do. I don’t know if the double click is unique to the facet or, if its is common across the product family.

I’ll try a firmware downgrade this evening and see if that gets me back up and running.

1 Like
4

firmware update appears to have me back up and running, need to reboot a few more times and do a few more mode changes, but things look good right now.

5

Thanks for the update John (@draakken ),

Apologies again for the hassle,
Paul

6

stuff happens… its software :face_with_peeking_eye:

After the FW downgrade, I did a factory reset, to get everything back to a known state. All worked well, went out and collected some points. Ran in base and rover mode, no troubles.

Came back inside, and put the device on the charger (bat was 85% according to serial logs)

now for problems #2 and #3

#2 The green charging LED is no longer showing charging activity. Tried 2 different cables, and 2 different chargers. At this point I did have serial port access, and the status messages on the serial port did indicate charging was occurring, then after a reboot the serial port disappeared, leading to #3

#3 The usb-c port is no longer creating serial ports when plugged into my Win 11 PC. Tried 2 different cables, and 3 different USB ports.

I do have access via wi-fi config mode, and the unit still passes data with sw maps in BT-LE mdoe.

7

Hi John (@draakken ),

For #2, the charger circuit has a temperature cut-off. If the unit is too warm internally, charging is suspended.

But, coupled with #3, I think it’s more likely that you are having USB connector issues. Maybe the USB connector has become partially detached from the internal circuit board? I’m not sure… I am going to ask @sparky to take a look at your report. But I’m pretty sure we’ll need you to return the unit. Please head over here. In the “Reason for returning product(s)” box, please paste a link to our conversation. It’s the URL of this page, ending in 65921.

I don’t think the firmware version will have anything to do with this, but please tell us which Release Candidate version / date you’ve uploaded.

Apologies,
Paul

8

running this firmware - RTK_Everywhere_Firmware_RC-May_21_2025.bin

9

Hi, Paul ( @PaulZC ).

I too have been encountering this bug in Base mode on my Facet mosaic L-Band, but what’s held me back from installing the May 21 RC firmware is issue #651, " The TCP Server/Client and UDP Server do not work". But as of yesterday, I see that a fix was apparently added to the Release Candidate branch “last week”.

Issue #651 would break important uses of the receiver, whether running as a base that could be reachable from other devices or running as a rover with QField on iOS.

Would it be possible to get another RC binary built soon, assuming it doesn’t have known issues that break any other key functions? These issues have been keeping me from buying another Facet mosaic L-Band.

Thanks!

10

When i checked on my facet this evening, the green charge LED is back to functional, and the serial ports appear when plugged into a PC. Not quite ready to RMA the device, but I am going to keep a sharp eye on it, any additional faults, and it will need to head back to Colorado.

11

Hi @wjc ,

We’re heading towards a new RC release and hopefully a full release soon. We’re a small team; developing the firmware and testing it across all the platforms takes time… If you keep an eye on the firmware source code repo issues and branch commits, you may be able to gauge how close we’re getting. :wink:

Thank you for supporting our products.

Best wishes,
Paul

2 Likes
12

@PaulZC: Good luck with it, and I’ll be looking forward to the full release. It’ll be nice to be able to run base-rover with all the observables that the mosaic-X5 supports.