ESD Causing Radio Failure

RE: ESD Causing Radio Failure

Kenneth — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 13:57:12 GMT

You may also check out this thread (in case it is firmware related):
https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/short-range-guides/b/getting-started/posts/nrf52840-dongle-programming-tutorial

See in specific: Recover after an accidental UICR erase

Though I don't think it is related if everything but the radio works.

RE: ESD Causing Radio Failure

Ivan Herrera — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 13:42:24 GMT

I've had two dongles and one of them almost instantly died, and I'm highly suspecting it was because the casing around my USB-hub is metal and it shorted things out on my first one. Always using the second one with a plastic USB-hub and it seems to be doing OK.

RE: ESD Causing Radio Failure

Kostic — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 04:13:57 GMT

I recall a similar issue on custom board with 52840: everything except radio was functional.
In my case, radio initialization in FW could never complete. I took 2 identical boards, put the same code. One was always passing radio init, the 2nd was always failing (hang somewhere in radio init routine). We sent this part for screening, 1 GPIO was found to have high leakage, which suggested ESD damage. This GPIO had nothing to do with radio, but I guess ESD could damage inner circuits of the chip.