NRF52832 in Hard Fault State.

[soumil]

Hi,

We have made a custom PCB using the NRF52832 chip. While it was working fine for a couple of days, it suddenly stopped working and went to a hard fault. We are not able to figure out the reason for this issue.

We have debugged the PCB and measured the voltages at different points in the circuit.

DEC1 - 750mV

VDD - 3.25V

DEC4 - 1.25V

DEC3 - 3.25V

DEC2 - 1.25V

RESET PIN - 3.25V

Is the voltage at DEC1 effecting the Nordic chip since it should be 0.9V?

Also please let us know when does hard fault usually come. We even ran a simple LED toggle program but even then we got a hard fault error.

Does hard fault mean that the memory of the chip is corrupted? Should we get the chip replaced ?

[MartinBL]

Sounds like a faulty IC then. There could be several reasons:

1. Unfortunately, on rare occasions it happens that faulty ICs slip through the testing at the fabrication houses and reach our customers.
2. The chip has been damaged by ESD.
3. The chip has been damaged by over voltage.
4. I suppose it could also be caused by bad soldering.

If you find more faulty ICs, please open a support case in our official support portal,MyPage, and we will investigate further.