Nordic Thingy 91 Not Showing Signs of Life

[Ossian Dillner]

Hello!

We recently acquired a Nordic Thingy:91 for prototyping and it was working great until I came into work this morning and it was no longer showing any signs of life so to say. The LED is not blinking and the device is not detected through USB anymore.

Is there any way to verify that the device is still functioning?

[JONATHAN LL]

Try to disconnect the battery as well while using USB, then reconnect the battery. 

If you have a debugger then you can try and connect to the debug port and see if anything is detected there. 

Regards,
Jonathan

[Ossian Dillner]

Hello!

Thank you for the quick reply, unfortunately disconnecting the battery doesn't seem to have any effect.

We were considering acquiring a debugging interface, unfortunately we don't really have any expertise with such devices. If possible, could you provide us with a list of the recommended devices as well as any peripherals necessary to perform this type of debugging?

[JONATHAN LL]

Hi,

Ossian Dillner said:

We were considering acquiring a debugging interface

Its possible to use our Development kits as Debugging devices so this can be an option for you that also might provide you with more hardware to test on. 


The nRF9160 or 9161 DK will both be good fits here. 
Alterative is to use one of our other DK's as the debugger, as long as its a kit that is produced the recently. 
https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Wireless/Low-power-cellular-IoT/Development-tools?lang=en#infotabs 

All you then need is a 10-pin ribbon cable, like this https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/samtec-inc/FFSD-05-D-06-00-01-N/1106577 . 


With a J-link device you will also need a J-Link 9-pin Cortex-M Adapter to use the connector on the Thingy directly. 



Then just info on working with the Thingy:
https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/device_guides/working_with_nrf/nrf91/thingy91.html 

It contains info on using external debugger as well in this section: https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/device_guides/working_with_nrf/nrf91/thingy91.html#updating-the-firmware-in-the-nrf52840-soc 

Regards,
Jonathan

[Ossian Dillner]

Hello again Jonathan!

Thanks for the detailed response. We acquired a nrf9160DK and attempted to connect our Thingy91 to it, but are having no luck communicating with the Thingy at all. It doesn't show up in any NRF connect programs or command line tools.

Do you have any suggestions on any next steps in bringing the device to life or verifying that it's completely dead?

[JONATHAN LL]

You can do som probing with a multimeter to see if there is any voltage on some of the test points, but first. 


Connect the DK to the nRF connect for desktop programmer app, and if the DK is erased,  it should look something like this:





Then if you connect the Thingy to the Debug out port on the DK and then connect the DK to nRF connect programmer app it might look like this:








Regards,
Jonathan

[Ossian Dillner]

Hello again Jonathan!

It seems that I finally got it working again using the DK. The Thingy itself was most likely flashed with a bad program.

The reason I was unable to then use the DK to connect to the Thingy was because of bad drivers, once this was resolved I was able to flash the Thingy with proper firmware and it's now working great!

Thanks for all the help.

[JONATHAN LL]

Thanks for updating!