Official bladeRF forum

Hi,

In case of student project i'm using 2 blade RF. Until yesterday the 2 blades worked fine but after testing emmiting with one Blade and receiving with the other, one of the two Blades doesn't work at all.

When i plug it the command bladeRF-cli -i return"No device attached", more of that the PC doesn't see the Blade when i plug it. The led turned on but the "dmesg" command show me nothing. I tried using probe, verbose, and all command that i can seen on the forum Nuand, on or gitub, but no way.

If someone can tell me what solution can i try in my case. I think it's not libblade or libus problem because the other blade works fine.

Thanks
Jordaw

Hi Jordaw,

I'm sorry to hear you're having a trouble with a device. Please do share anything you can; if there were any "oops" moments in which you think something might have been damaged, please let us know. This could help to more quickly pinpoint the issue.

Jordaw wrote:In case of student project i'm using 2 blade RF. Until yesterday the 2 blades worked fine but after testing emmiting with one Blade and receiving with the other, one of the two Blades doesn't work at all.

(1) Which one is not working, the transmitter, or the receiver?

(2a) How was the device configured and what were you doing with it?
(2b) For example, were they connected directly?
(2c) What were the gains?
(2d) Were attenuators used (and if so, what values)?

(3) Are the power source selection jumpers correct? Please provide a nice, clear picture of the board if you're not sure and we can take a look.

(4) Just for our own reference, could you attach some logs from dmesg and [/b]lsusb[/b]?

(5) You noted that the LED is on -- this is good; it tells us that the board is powered up. Depending on what you are able to find and provide above, we may have you probe a few voltages.

(6) One other thing we commonly recommend is trying the same device on a different machine, using the GNU Radio Live Environment. This often helps tell us whether the issue is hardware or software.

Best,
Jon

My bad if i wasn't clear, first i've a bad english, then i can't screenshot and post my troubles cause i work on a other PC and can't connect it or pick information of, so i'll try to be more explicit than i can.

I had to work on BladeRF but i've not experience so i try to get the hand with the hard in a first time.(My project consist of sending date with one blade and receive in the orther, both working stand alone)

After installing the soft on the PC using getting started: lunux on gitHub, i do the section"Verifying Basic Device Operation" and that works with the 2 blade.

Then i make a GNU Radio program:

A cosinus Signal source>>osmocom Sink with device argument:bladerf=0,fpga='hostedx40.rbf'.

An osmocom Source with device argument:bladerf=0,fpga='hostedx40.rbf,loopback=rf_lna1.>>>WX GUI Scope sink.

I don't know if it's a good way to do but this program works, with "blade n°1 or blade n°2". So in this time, my 2 blades worked.

Then i tried to do an other GNU RADIO program. That i wanted was that: Send a cosinus with one blade, received it in the second blade.
So i plug my 2 blade on my PC and try to make this program.(Note that i always using 50ohms antennas on the TX's RX's in order to protect them, using loopback or not).
So on my first program I change the block Osmocom Source, and put in device argument"bladerf=1,fpga='hostedx40.rbf".
when i lanch the program, the leds on both blades was blinding"led2".
But at this moment i suppose that it was not the good method to realise the "cosinus transfert", so i stop it.
So i check if i can't find solution on the net, but not, so i decided continuing work with blades independently.
At this moment, i plug only the blade i try used on the second program as the receiver. And here...it doesn't work.

Only the power led was on.

The first program doesn't work with this blade, but with the other.

So i try on terminal:
bladeRF-cli -i
No device(s) attached
bladeRF>probe
probe: No devices found.
bladeRF> version
bladeRF-cli version: 1.2.1-git-unknown
libbladeRF version: 1.4.3-git-unknown

the commande bladeRF-cli -v verbose send me
[VERBOSE @ libusb.c:515] Using libusb version: 1.0.17.10830
[DEBUG @ libusb.C:524] No devices availables ont the libusb backend.
No devices(s) attached.

And they are also nothing, when i plug, unplug this device and do the commmand "dsmeg" so i expect that the PC do not "see" the device.

The second blade work fine but this one doesn't work at all.
My tutor try using it on is own PC and it's the same, only the power led is on.

i tri to install the last version"Building bladeRF libraries and tools from source".
because i've and old version, the result is the same. one blade still working, the second not...

So in fact, my 2 blades works fine until i try a GNU radio program, since that one of the 2 blades doesn't work...
Can a gnu radio program put off one of my blade ?
is there a way to restore it? because PC do no recognize it ....

thanks for helping.
Jordaw

Considering the power is present but the device is not seen, even through dmesg, I would say the problem is either the USB cable or the USB connector on the bladeRF that might be partially damaged.
I'm not familiar enough with the Cypress FX3 to say if missing firmware would also show the same symptoms. Maybe jynik knows

Try to connect the bladeRF with another cable to see if this solves the problem. A USB2 cable would be enough in your case to simply check if the bladeRF is detected or you can simply use the cable from the other bladeRF as this one is still detected.
If this doesn't work, try to take a high resolution picture of the bladeRF, around the USB connector (preferably from the back of the connector) so that we can visually check that everything is ok.

There is no problem with the USB cable because the two cables i own work with the second BladeRF.
The USB connector seems to be ok... Visually there is no problem, it looks perfectly like the other, (no "jonction" or "gap" problem).

No more idea for my problem?
Do you think i can use altera usb blaster for debugging my BladeRF?

What does the output of lsusb look like?

Note that you can specify bladeRF devices by serial number, which is what I would recommend rather than 0, 1, 2, etc., in multi-device setups.

Per the osmoscom wiki, you could do bladerf=1ef to specify a bladeRF whose serial number begins with "1ef".

"What does the output of lsusb look like?"

It doesn't see the board...My board's not seen by my computer, the power up led iis on but it's the only thing working on this board.

So i tried to switch jumpers On J70 and powered it by external DC, in this way, the led is on too.

I tried to plug altera USB blaster, who recognize the OTHER board( the board still working). So My usb blaster is ok.

But with the second board( the board i can't use), the usb blaster doesn't see anything. So this second board's not recognize by the PC >>>impossible to use bootloader mode or other ( I can't do nothing with the USB)
And also it's not seen by USB blaster...

So, with all this thing...if you have any advice or thing i can try to do, it will be great.

Thanks

So it sounds like neither the FX3 USB 3.0 Peripheral controller or the Cyclone IV are "alive". Trying to narrow down why this is the case would be a good start.

I would recommend grabbing a copy of the schematic and measuring the voltage at each of the power rails. If you think something might have been shorted at some point, start with the inputs and output to various regulators to see if one of these has been damaged.