pi4 model suddenly gone / unavailable

[s710]

I want to use my new pi 4 as my home automation platform, and it shall replace my existing model 3b, which is running everything fine already. I need to plug 3 USB sticks: Z-Wave, zigbee & a receiver for a remote control. In addition, I attached the hifiberry DAC+DSP HAT (https://www.hifiberry.com/blog/announcing-the-dac-dsp/).

Now I've already reinstalled the pi4 like 3 times, fearing that something on the way of the installation went wrong, but I always end up with the pi4 disconnecting after some random time. The LEDs on the LAN port will go off, and the pi4 will become unreachable. I can only fix this by pulling the power cable and plugging it again. The pi4 will work again afterwards, until it eventually dies again some time.

Compared to the pi3, which is running raspbian stretch, I am running raspbian buster on the pi4. That might be the only difference. The rest of the installed software should be the same.

I have no clue how I could find out what is causing this, and I am afraid that the board might be broken. Or could it maybe be the power supply? I've got this one: https://www.reichelt.de/raspberry-pi-ne ... dr::259919

And once thing to note, I also tried to plug the USB-C power cable of my MacBook, however the pi4 didn't even start (LED also off). Shouldn't all USB-C cables be compatible in this regard? Or did I damage the pi4 by plugging my MacBook power supply?

[rpdom]

There is a known issue with Apple chargers/power supplies that they don't work with the current Pi4B in that the charger can't detect the Pi properly and sees it as an audio device that doesn't need power. There may be a modified version of the Pi 4B in future that fixes this. The official Pi power supply works fine. It is possible that your supply is faulty or just can't provide enough power for the Pi 4B.

Is the red Power LED on your Pi lit constantly, or does it go off at all?

Do you have a screen and keyboard attached to the Pi?

If so, does it respond to the keyboard when the network connection fails?

If it does, can you post the output of the command vcgencmd get_throttled when it has failed (not after restarting, that won't prove anything)

Code: Select all

pi@raspi12:~ $ vcgencmd get_throttled
throttled=0x0

[fruitoftheloom]

I want to use my new pi 4 as my home automation platform, and it shall replace my existing model 3b, which is running everything fine already. I need to plug 3 USB sticks: Z-Wave, zigbee & a receiver for a remote control. In addition, I attached the hifiberry DAC+DSP HAT (https://www.hifiberry.com/blog/announcing-the-dac-dsp/).

Now I've already reinstalled the pi4 like 3 times, fearing that something on the way of the installation went wrong, but I always end up with the pi4 disconnecting after some random time. The LEDs on the LAN port will go off, and the pi4 will become unreachable. I can only fix this by pulling the power cable and plugging it again. The pi4 will work again afterwards, until it eventually dies again some time.

Compared to the pi3, which is running raspbian stretch, I am running raspbian buster on the pi4. That might be the only difference. The rest of the installed software should be the same.

I have no clue how I could find out what is causing this, and I am afraid that the board might be broken. Or could it maybe be the power supply? I've got this one: https://www.reichelt.de/raspberry-pi-ne ... dr::259919

And once thing to note, I also tried to plug the USB-C power cable of my MacBook, however the pi4 didn't even start (LED also off). Shouldn't all USB-C cables be compatible in this regard? Or did I damage the pi4 by plugging my MacBook power supply?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 28&t=58151

[s710]

There is a known issue with Apple chargers/power supplies that they don't work with the current Pi4B in that the charger can't detect the Pi properly and sees it as an audio device that doesn't need power. There may be a modified version of the Pi 4B in future that fixes this. The official Pi power supply works fine. It is possible that your supply is faulty or just can't provide enough power for the Pi 4B.

Is the red Power LED on your Pi lit constantly, or does it go off at all?

Do you have a screen and keyboard attached to the Pi?

If so, does it respond to the keyboard when the network connection fails?

If it does, can you post the output of the command vcgencmd get_throttled when it has failed (not after restarting, that won't prove anything)

Code: Select all

pi@raspi12:~ $ vcgencmd get_throttled
throttled=0x0

Thanks for your reply. I will try the above. However I don't have a micro-HDMI cable, so I'll get one of those first, until then I cannot connect a display.

For the last disconnects/crashes, the power LED was still on, but the LAN LED was off. Maybe I'll try meanwhile to write some file on the pi, and check after the reboot if it was written still. Maybe I can also periodically dump the above command and evaluate after a disconnect/reboot.

I'll report back later.

So, in case the power supply was the issue, I should get myself another one, more powerful? E.g. will this one do? https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M4I7FMC/ref ... B07NPKXFBD

[drgeoff]

So, in case the power supply was the issue, I should get myself another one, more powerful? E.g. will this one do? https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M4I7FMC/ref ... B07NPKXFBD

Buy the official RPi PSU for RPi4B.

[gkreidl]

So, in case the power supply was the issue, I should get myself another one, more powerful? E.g. will this one do? https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M4I7FMC/ref ... B07NPKXFBD

Buy the official RPi PSU for RPi4B.

The link shows that he already has the official power supply.

[rpdom]

Thanks for your reply. I will try the above. However I don't have a micro-HDMI cable, so I'll get one of those first, until then I cannot connect a display.

You can do a few things blindly without a display.

When the network lights have gone out, plug in a USB keyboard and try the following (typing blindly is tricky, I know):

Press Ctrl-Alt-3 (that should get to a console login prompt, but you won't see it without a display)
Enter "pi"
Enter "raspberry"
The green LED may flicker a bit at this time - that would be a good sign.
Enter "vcgencmd get_throttled >throttled" - That should write the output of the command to a file in the "pi" user's home directory.
Enter "sudo reboot"

If that worked, the Pi should reboot cleanly and maybe the network will come back.

If it did reboot, you should be able to see the file "throttled" in the pi home directory and see its contents.

[s710]

Thanks for your reply. I will try the above. However I don't have a micro-HDMI cable, so I'll get one of those first, until then I cannot connect a display.

You can do a few things blindly without a display.

When the network lights have gone out, plug in a USB keyboard and try the following (typing blindly is tricky, I know):

Press Ctrl-Alt-3 (that should get to a console login prompt, but you won't see it without a display)
Enter "pi"
Enter "raspberry"
The green LED may flicker a bit at this time - that would be a good sign.
Enter "vcgencmd get_throttled >throttled" - That should write the output of the command to a file in the "pi" user's home directory.
Enter "sudo reboot"

If that worked, the Pi should reboot cleanly and maybe the network will come back.

If it did reboot, you should be able to see the file "throttled" in the pi home directory and see its contents.

Yeah cool, also a good idea. I'll try that out. Already ordered the cable tho, so latest tomorrow I'll see whats going on. I also ordered this other PSU (link above), to see if it gets any better. I'm just not so good with electronics (I'm more of a programmer/software dude), so normally I am unsure of what volt/ampere/watt to get or what could blow my house lol.

[edit] If that might be of any interest, I am not having any heatsink/cooling in place as of now. This leads to the pi4 getting to 50-55° in idle, and up to 80° under load. However, even when compiling for several minutes (at 80°), the disconnect/crash did not occur so far. The disconnects have so far been when idle or under small load only.

[rpdom]

Those temperatures shouldn't be a problem. The Pi 4B throttles back when it hits 85°C (should have been 88°C Lol!), but they have been tested to work without problems at over 110°C.

[drgeoff]

So, in case the power supply was the issue, I should get myself another one, more powerful? E.g. will this one do? https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M4I7FMC/ref ... B07NPKXFBD

Buy the official RPi PSU for RPi4B.

The link shows that he already has the official power supply.

In which case the one from Amazon will not be better. Probably worse. Possibly much worse.

[s710]

Buy the official RPi PSU for RPi4B.

The link shows that he already has the official power supply.

In which case the one from Amazon will not be better. Probably worse. Possibly much worse.

Okay then in this case could you recommend a better one? As should be clear by now, I am no expert and in need of help

[s710]

Maybe as short feedback, as I have temporarily used this pi 4 for something else, I did another fresh installation yesterday with raspbian buster lite (in my first attempts I did not install the lite version, but the full version).

then, before anything else, I did a full system update/upgrade. Afterwards I installed all my stuff as usual, until I had a complete clone of my old pi 3.

This time, I have yet to face any outage, and I have no clue why that is. It is running since, and everything works. I don't see any other differences to my first attempts/installations, other than maybe I disabled wifi via /boot/config.txt earlier, but now left it enabled.

So I am not sure if it could actually have been a software issue, or if I got unlucky several times plugging the power cord, but as it seems, it is running stable now. Nevertheless, I will continue monitoring, and check the above commands in case I would have another outage.