MMWCAS-DSP-EVM: 5V TP read ~1.4V board is not functionnal

Hi,

The hardware team will review this question and get back to you before next Monday

thank you

Cesar

Hello,

Do you have any updates for us?

Hello User,

Sincere apologies for the delay in reply.

Are you unable able to see any of the LEDs that come up as soon as power is supplied to the board? (Power Good LEDs for eg).

Could you let us know the specifications of the power adapter used for this setup? A 12V, 5A supply is the minimum requirement.

Regarding the soft start capacitor, let me check with my concerned colleague on this.

Regards,

Ishita

Hello,

Power supply:

Stabilized power supply set to 12v (401L LXI certified 400W).

Setup:
After installing related applications like mmWave Studio, MATLAB Compiler Runtime (MCR), Visual C++ Redistributable (VCredist), FTDI Drivers and so on, we took the steps for running the TI demos exactly according to the "mmWave Studio Cascade" user's guide. We have also checked the power supply requirements with the DSP board schematics "SCHTIDEP-01017 Schematic (Rev. B)".

Powering:
We attached the board to the PC via the mini-USB cable. We opened both virtual COM ports of the FTDI in two TeraTerm terminals. Also attached the Ethernet cable and set the recommended static IP for the PC. After that, we powered the board on. There was no log sent to either of the TeraTerm terminals.

First Diagnostics Step:
We noticed that all LEDs of both boards including the "3.3 & 5.0 Power Good" LED are off. Guessed that could be related to some initialization commands from the TDA2XX application sending to the power management chip. So we burnt the "sdimage" in the PlatformBinaries folder on a new SD-Card and retried the procedure in case that the problem was with the Linux software. Again, we were not successful.

Second Diagnostic Step:
We checked all the SYSTEM test points. The 12V and 3.3V were OK but we read a 1.4V on "SYSTEm 5V" test point. Similar Issues:
It seems that other users had the same issue with this evaluation board and have reported them in TI forums, some of which are provided as following:

https://e2e.ti.com/support/sensors/f/1023/p/870745/3247319
https://e2e.ti.com/support/sensors/f/1023/p/962052/3554667
https://e2e.ti.com/support/processors/f/791/p/906707/3352802
https://e2e.ti.com/support/processors/f/791/p/923157/3411747 

As a TI expert has stated in one of the aforementioned threads, it seems that the problem is with the soft-start capacitor (C128) utilized on the 5V/3.3V regulator (U18).

Summary:
All the test points are OK except SYSTEM 5V. We have tested both with and without the RF-Module assembled. Also it is visible that despite the board being powered, all power status LEDs are turned off.

Hello User,

Thankyou for your detailed info. This definitely helps. 

I would need some time to look into this with the internal team and then make a call based on that. I will get back to you within a weeks time.

Hope that's okay.

Regards,

Ishita 

Hello,

Any update? Do you need more info ?

Regards,

Hello User,

Extremely sorry for the delay.

You can reach out to your local sales team and raise a request for return/exchange.

Regards,

Ishita

Hello,

We updated the CS ticket, is there anything else we should do ?

Regards,

Hello,

With regards to any further communication on the return, the respective sales team will reach out. 

Please go ahead in case you want to buy a new board for your evaluation.

Regards,

Ishita

Hello, 

Do you need any further information. Please confirm, so that I can close this concern.

Regards,

Ishita

Hi,

We would love to know the usual reply time from CS, it has been 10 days without an update to the ticket (we updated the ticket when you gave us the get go for RMA).

Regards,

Hello User,

I have communicated this to the concerned team, someone will be getting back to you on this soon.

Thankyou for your patience.

Regards,

Ishita