Hey there,
So finally finished putting the pspi v3 together this weekend. Went to fire it up and of course it powers on then directly off. I tried reloading the config.txt followed by a format and full reinstall of the image file and all your files. No luck. Pulled it apart and and put new ad card adapter in as I did kinda melt the hell out of the original one putting it in. Still no luck. Tried SD card in the pi itself with and without remote mount USB. Still nothing. Tore it fully apart and went through every picture in the tutorial and found that mine looked a little different. The component (shown below) looks to be broken. Could this be the culprit? If so what is it so I might be able to hop out to frys after work and grab one. Planned on taking my meter home from work to test the SD card jumper holes and gpio pins. Just wanted to see if I'm going down the right rabbit hole here.
The pic isn't showing up.
Sorry did not load in first post.
Nope, that component won't cause that to happen. That's just a potentiometer that let you set the warning voltage for the low-battery LED.
The only thing that can cause the board to power off is not getting 3.3v from GPIO14. It's wired to automatically power off if that pin isn't pulled high within 3 seconds of powering the board on. That can be a software or a Pi issue.
What method are you using to transfer the RetroPie image to the SD card?
I'm using windisk32 loading version 4.2 of retro pi unzipping the .imz file with 7 zip. I use diskpart to clean SD card between reinstalls.
Ok that rules out the easy things.
If you can get that meter then there are some things to test.
When you hit the power switch you should be getting 5.2v at the pin circled red, 3.3v at the pin circled orange, and within a second or two of powering on you should be getting 3.3v at the pin circled yellow.
I added a ground pad for troubleshooting, and it's circled white.
If you aren't getting 3.3v at the yellow pin, you can connect a wire between the yellow pin and the orange pin to keep the board powered on long enough to see what's happening with the Pi.
I will have the meter on it tonight. Just curious as electricity to me is still PFM ( pure freakin' magic), where does the voltage get stepped up if we solder the batteries in parallel they should only put out 3.7 volts?
They still output 3.7v (really its 3.0v to 4.2v depending on how charged it is). There's a group of components in the middle of the board that step the voltage up to a stable 5.2v. It's a couple of mosfets, a PWM generator, comparators, and an inductor.
If you want to see PFM, check this out.
Oh trust me I've seen PFM. I used to be a nuclear machinist mate on the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier. We had to learn the electricians job in case of emergency. Part of why I used to be. Lol
Ok so finally got meter home and sure enough yellow pin no voltage. Connected wire from yellow to orange and now orange light stays on, nothing else happens. No screen no nothing.
Ok that narrows it down to an issue with the Pi itself or an issue with the OS. Probably not the OS, since you've transferred it the typical way.
Can you disconnect all the wires going from the board to the SD to microSD adapter, just in case one of them is shorting the SD slot?
I'm assuming you are getting around 5.2v at the red pin.
I can remove it. Will I need to desolder the jumper holes? Yes I'm getting 5.2v
Removing the wires should be enough.
If you remove them and it still isn't working, then feel free to post some pics and I can look for something obvious. You can also email them to my admin email address if the pics are large.
Ok so I originally measured on pi side. Measured volts on pspi board side and did not have 3.3v at orange pin. Extra solder fixed this. Loaded up just fine. Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention and set the soldering iron down too close to the start button harness. Set R and L to start and select for now. Should I expect any other problems right now without the bottom button bar?
No, it's not an emergency or anything. Start and select are used to exit games, so it's good that you're using L and R in place of them. Those are the only important buttons on the bottom bar. Aliexpress has those ribbons for a couple bucks.
