thingy 52 crash

[Marty de Vries]

We recently purchased a few Thingy 52s, and we're very impressed with the simplicity!

After playing with the Thingy 52,and upgrading the FW to 2.2.0, I noticed that the device locks up after a while. This manifests itself as a blinking yellow/green LED, and it's not possible to connect to the Thingy anymore.

The only way to get back control is to turn the power off and then back on again.

In 'normal operation', the blue LED is flashing away happily, and when the device enters sleep, pressing the button on the front of device or shaking it usually works. However, this 'locked up' state appears quite often.

Any ideas?

-Marty.

[Marty de Vries]

Pressing the button to wake up the device seems to be the problem. Any chance that you can update the FW to make this less sensitive?

[Karl Ylvisaker]

Hello Marty,

Marty de Vries said:

It's the flashing yellow, which means DFU mode. That's clear now -thanks!

I am happy that my comment proved useful to you!

Marty de Vries said:

I noticed that the flashing blue LED turns off after a while, and that you can't connect to the thingy anymore via the app, without waking it up.

I pressed on the front button to wake up the device, as the plan would be to have the thingy attached to the wall.

Are you running the firmware as provided, or have you made any modifications to it?
Have you seen the Thingy 52 SDK github? You may change this behavior to me more in line with what you would like.
The provided Thingy:52 firmware showcases all the platforms functionality - which might be more than you need for your project. To conserve power and increase battery life I would recommend creating an application that does the specific job you have in mind.

Marty de Vries said:

On another note, I also noticed that the temperature reading is about 2-3 degrees too high. Any ideas?

I have never heard about the sensor being off by 2-3 degrees before.
How did you identify this offset - did you measure the temperature with an alternate source for cross referencing, and if so: what is this other source?
Could you also elaborate more on the test setup?

Best regards,
Karl

 

[Marty de Vries]

This FW is the default Nordic 2.2.0 version - no modifications.

Placing two thingys next to each other, and also an analog and digital indoor weather station device next to the thingys, I compared the temperature readings. The analog and digial weather station were very comparable, but the Thingys were a little high.

The temperature seems a little better today, when comparing this with a digital thermometer. I assume that the device needs to be on for a while for the readings to settle. Is this true for temperature? Another explanation could be that the when the Thingys were on for a while (1 hour), the battery got hotter.

I assume that all sensors keep on running when the Thingy is in sleep?

thanks.

[Karl Ylvisaker]

Hello,

Marty de Vries said:

Placing two thingys next to each other, and also an analog and digital indoor weather station device next to the thingys, I compared the temperature readings. The analog and digial weather station were very comparable, but the Thingys were a little high.

The temperature seems a little better today, when comparing this with a digital thermometer. I assume that the device needs to be on for a while for the readings to settle. Is this true for temperature? Another explanation could be that the when the Thingys were on for a while (1 hour), the battery got hotter.

I have not heard anyone else mention an increasing offset in temperature readings from the Thingy:52, but I suppose it is reasonable following 1 hour of operation, especially considering that you could feel a temperature increase in the battery, along with the temperature sensors close proximity to the battery.
Could you remove the PCB from the plastic casing with the battery(leave the battery connected to the PCB, but leave the battery in the casing), and repeat the measuring procedure? If it is the battery causing the offset in temperature then this should be evident by this test. The PCB is secured in the casing by the two clips.

The sensors can continue writing to the nrf52 while it is sleeping if they are using easyDMA. This will only require that the MCU wakes up when the data is written to RAM, to process it.
However, I do not think that the 2.2.0 firmware uses easyDMA for its sensors by default. Looking into the source code on github it seems that they do not use the easyDMA feature.
Are you able to see data for the time the device has been sleeping when you wake it up from sleep?

Best regards,
Karl