Hi everyone,
I have been using the CC2430F128 2.4GHz for a years (tens of thousands). Until now I haven't had any problems. Now I have two obscures problems: several of them the radio are not working and some others, it is not possible flashing/program them. The HW and FW designs have not change for years. Currently, we have 1000 devices in production but we can not delivery them due to these problems.
Concerning to the radio issue: the antenna, balun, passive components and pcb layout have not changed, even the stackup is the same. The problem is that is not possible to send or to receive frames. I have tried to send and receive using the SmartRF Studio 7, just for sending/receiving and nothing happen. I test the next points to discover what is happening:
1. Measure the matching antenna/balun curves with VNA and there are OK. We use a Johanson Technology antenna and balun for the CC2430.
2. The external 32MHz and 32.768KHz clocks are OK and the frequency are OK.
3. We have done X-ray of the CC2430 and our pcb and they seems OK, no short/open-circuits in the RF circuits are found.
4. The internal radio has to be powered supply to +1.8Vdc (pins from 25, 27-31, 35-40). We use the CC2430 internal regulator (+1.8V) to supply it. In some parts with radio issue, the voltage at the pin 24 (RReg_out) is +3.3Vdc. At the beginning we thought this could be the problem: for any reason these CC2430 parts had some problem in the internal regulator giving +3.3Vdc to the internal radio peripheral damaging them. However, we have measured tens of parts with the radio issue and at the pin 4 (RReg_out) we measure +3.3V, 0V and/or 1.8V.
5. The Rbias1 and 2 are 43K and 56K respectively.
6. In the same device, we have changed until 4 or 5 CC2430 without success, but when we have soldered the 6th CC2430 it worked!
At this point we don't know what is happening and what more to test/verify and what is the origin of the problem.
Concerning to the flashing the CC2430 issue, we have verified the connection between the CC debugger pins and the CC2430 program pins and they are OK, no noise are present at these pins, no CC or CO. We have programed tens of thousands of them without problems until now.
Please, can anybody help us with these issues? We are in a critical situation because of this. We have information of the measurements, X-ray, etc available to share. We have also the ITEM number of a purchase: 1296331STS (CC2430ZF128RTC)
Thank you very much.