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Intel® Edison Board Troubleshooting and FAQ

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13 Apr 2015CPOL5 min read 9.1K  
Intel® Edison Board Troubleshooting and FAQ

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1-Edison keeps power cycling

Your Edison starts to reboot itself, and goes into a cycle of this behavior. This is because Some PCs USB ports or USB cables do not provide enough power to properly power the Edison board.
Workaround: Try another USB cable, or different port on your PC. If this doesn’t work power the Edison using an AC power Supply. If you have Galileo Gen2 board, that power supply will work with Edison. Check Edison documentation for proper power supply.

2-Cannot connect on COM port

You get an error such as "Cannot connect to COM4".
Workaround: Check that you have properly connected USB cables and that Edison is powered. If both USB ports are connected to your PC and the Edison is powered you should have a new drive Mounted on you PC called Edison. If that drive is not mounted your USB cables are not properly connected, may be bad, your Edison may not be powered on. If that drive is mounted but you cannot connect to the COM port you are connecting to the wrong COM port. For Windows check the Device manager and make sure you are using the COM port with the label "USB" not the one labelled "virtual". If this persists you may want to try connecting to the Edison via Ethernet over USB

3-Can connect to COM port but cannot get a response

You get a terminal Window with a cursor but hitting the enter key or typing isn’t providing a response. It is possible you are connecting an incorrect but active COM such as the virtual COM port.

Workaround: For Windows look in Device Manager, you may see two devices and ports. Use the one labeled for USB, do not use the virtual port for Edison. You may also have a COM port conflict. See Microsoft Instructions for COM issues. For Mac see help on discovering Serial ports. If this persists you may want to try connecting to the Edison via Ethernet over USB

4-Firmware Not Flashing

You have forgotten your password or otherwise want to reinitialize your Intel Edison board. You download the firmware and follow the instruction at Flashing Edison (wired) - Windows. However, in the output you see the line, "Unable to read file ota_update.scr" and the board is not reset. The problem is related to the the uboot-tools not being installed by default on the board.

For more information: https://communities.intel.com/thread/55389

5-Edison Image is not installing

You’ve copied a new set of files to the Edison drive but they are not working. This is likely do to a file copy issue with long file names and user permissions:

Workaround: Unresolved issue, we recommend you use an unzip utility like 7-Zip and make sure you are unzipping from your PC hard drive to the Edison drive. Do not unzip then copy.

6-Edison IP is not accessible after reboot

Edison is not accessible on the network after reboot and seems to lose its access to the WiFi
Workaround: Follow the WiFi configuration settings in the set up documentation ie at root enter command: configure_edison --wifi

7-Can't get LCD to work on Edison

You followed documentation but you can't get the Grove Starter Kit LCD to work. This is a known where the bus address for Edison may be incorrect in the documentation AND OR you may not be sending a string to the LCD:
Workaround/Resolution: Change the BUS address from "0" to "6" and convert any sensor data to a string before writing to the LCD. See LCD issue and example in our forum

8-Cannot run "configure_edison --setup" command at Edison Console prompt

The configure_edison –setup command is installed when the Edison is updated by reflashing the on device memory. Out of box Edisons will show an error when this command is typed. Goto ->Reflashing your Edison: Windows OS X Linux

9-Sorry, could not find a PTY when attempting to screen into your board

If you are getting error Sorry, could not find a PTY when attempting to screen into Intel Edison, try the following:

  • Use different Micro-USB cables before trying "screen" or PUTTY. Some cables simply don’t work, not sure why. I have had this happen to me a couple times.
  • Make sure BOTH Micro-USB cables are connected before using screen or putty.
  • Unplug and plug back in the serial cable (not the power cable) to get your computer to recognize the Edison
  • Download and install Bloop and use "bloop clean" to prepare your Edison for connections
  • Finally, try hitting "reset" or finally simply unplugging power and plugging it back in if nothing else works.

If none of that works, try accessing your Intel Edison over the local network or by USB tether via SSH and seeing if you can get a terminal that way. When exiting from a screen session, always try to press Ctrl + d to detach cleanly.

Try a free open source library called Bloop which can automatically clear dead screen sessions and help you initiate ssh, scp and screen interactions with your Edison. Bloop.

10-"Partition Failed Couldn’t unmount disk" on OS X

The getting started instructions for Intel Edison instruct you to open a terminal and delete the contents of /Volumes/Edison. Unfortunately, if you leave the terminal window open while attempting to partition your Edison ,you will see this error. The solution is simple: Close the terminal before trying to partition the disk!

Get access to the new Intel® IoT Developer Kit, a complete hardware and software solution that allows developers to create exciting new solutions with the Intel® Galileo and Intel® Edison boards. Visit the Intel® Developer Zone for IoT.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)