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I have 3 Raspberries set up in cases with holes in them. Each Raspberry has a microcontroller and a wireless adapter attached via USB. Two Raspberries have been working fine for 5 months now. However, one setup fails constantly.

I replaced the faulty raspberry with a new one because I didn't have the time to check why it was failing. It just didn't boot, only the red LED was active.

I thought it could be the fuse and just replaced it with a new one. After a few days I got the faulty one booting again, after flashing a new image to the SD card. This didn't last long, though. After a few minutes, I couldn't reboot anymore, same situation - red LED only.

Today, the setup failed with the new Raspberry after 20 days and I think it's the same error. The Raspberries get quite warm - about 55°C, maybe a little more. The wireless adapter seems to produce a lot of heat as well.

Besides that, all setups use the same hardware - because of that, I don't think that its the SD-Card model or any other component.

Why is this setup failing multiple times while the other setups run perfectly?

What do I have to check in order to identify the source of the problem?

Any ideas are highly appreciated.

EDIT: I have to add that all those Raspberries are never shut down. They run like 20 hours until they literally get powered off, until they get powered on again after about 7 hours.

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  • Try placing it inside your fridge. If it's a heating problem, it should run fine inside the fridge. :-)
    – Gerben
    Commented Jun 12, 2013 at 10:20

2 Answers 2

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if you have three identical setups, you may easily swap parts one by one to find the faulty one, start from the power supply, then goes the wireless adapter, then other externally-connected devices, then SD cards, and finally if the problem still persists, you'd better check the back side of your boards to find out the revision and production date and see if there's any difference there.

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  • Makes sense. +1 Possibly the peripheral hardware on the recently exchanged Pi is faulty. Like a bad SD card or a faulty power supply.
    – Piotr Kula
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 15:57
  • How could I detect a bad SD Card? The thing is, that I'm using the exact same sd card model for every setup and when I flash a new image onto the sd card, it works just fine. Maybe some bad blocks?
    – s1ck
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 16:46
  • I will try incrementially changing every component. Indeed, the sd card could have some bad blocks or maybe the controller is messed up. What bugs me most is that even after changing those components, it didn't start. Because of that, I thought the raspberry was broken but apparently it was not.
    – s1ck
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 16:48
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    Try another power supply. I notices I have allot of issues with power supplies. I find the HTC chargers stable but cant cope with power surges. Cheap ebay jobies are not good all :(
    – Piotr Kula
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 17:09
  • I will definitely try changing the psu although I don't think that it's the psu model, because, well, I have 2 more setups with the same hardware and it does run fine
    – s1ck
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 19:23
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Frequently a power supply problem. Try one amp PS.

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    Could you expand a bit on this answer? Explain why should the OP try a one amp power supply.
    – syb0rg
    Commented Feb 1, 2014 at 5:08
  • Because the raspberry pi is very susceptible to low power programming issues. If you browse the pi forums this is the first thing they tell you to do and it worked for me. What more do you want me to say....? I did not build the board.
    – user19614
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:02
  • Edit that information into your answer, don't post it as a comment. This is for your benefit, not mine.
    – syb0rg
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:22

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