Pinecil not working

[psychedup]

I received my Pinecil yesterday, which would have been great timing as I have a small soldering project to do this weekend. But sadly it is now not working and i'm not sure what to do...

When I first plugged it in, I used this Aukey USB-C power supply, which I often use to keep my PBP charged up. Initially I didn't heat it up yet, but as advised in today's Pine64 News, I decided to update the firmware first. i'm running Gentoo on my PBP and was able to install dfu-utils and the flashing process seemed to go fine.

Next I was ready to fire the thing up, so I disconnected it from the PBP and plugged it into the Aukey power supply again, then pushed the button to heat it up. It heated up very quickly, and there was a tiny bit of smoke coming off of the tip - this didn't concern me, since it was its first time getting that hot. Once it got up to temp (like 350 degrees C or something), I turned it off and waited for it to cool back down. It's really nice having the display so I can easily tell when it's safe to put it away.

After it had been sitting for a few minutes and was back down to a normalish temperature, the display suddenly turned off. I assumed it went to sleep because I hadn't done anything with it for a while, and i expected once I pushed the buttons it would wake back up, but it did not respond. So I unplugged it for a few seconds and then plugged it back in (to the power brick) and still nothing happened.

So next I thought maybe something went wrong with the firmware, I'll try reflashing it. But when I plug it into my PBP, it's no longer detected as a USB device. Here's what I'm seeing now:

• If I leave it unplugged for a while (like 10 minutes or so) and then plug it into the PBP, in dmesg I see something like:
  [  +1.360001] usb 2-1-port1: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?[  +0.000384] usb 2-1-port1: attempt power cycle(but not the usual message with the USB vendor/device id's like it showed earlier)
• If I hold down "-" while plugging it in, nothing shows up at all.
  

I wonder if that means it is "soft bricked"? I assume I would need the breakout board to recover from that, but is there any way for me to confirm that it's not a hardware problem first? Or what would be the next logical troubleshooting step?

[Ralim]

• If I leave it unplugged for a while (like 10 minutes or so) and then plug it into the PBP, in dmesg I see something like:
  [  +1.360001] usb 2-1-port1: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?[  +0.000384] usb 2-1-port1: attempt power cycle(but not the usual message with the USB vendor/device id's like it showed earlier)
• If I hold down "-" while plugging it in, nothing shows up at all.
  

I wonder if that means it is "soft bricked"? I assume I would need the breakout board to recover from that, but is there any way for me to confirm that it's not a hardware problem first? Or what would be the next logical troubleshooting step?

(1) This is normal as the main firmware does not implement USB (so the computer will see no response).
(2) The bootloader that you trigger with the "-" is burned into the rom of the MCU so you can erase it (as far as I'm aware).

I would suggest trying a different cable / port if you can first (as some cables are not amazing quality, and the mcu isnt amazing usb driving either i suspect).
Also, try holding the "-" when you plug it in, and then continue to hold it for 10 seconds or so. On some devices I have found that it can take a bit for the ROM to initalise and set itself up correctly.

I have found it helpful to run dmesg -wH to watch dmesg while i connect the unit so i can see whats going on.

[psychedup]

• If I leave it unplugged for a while (like 10 minutes or so) and then plug it into the PBP, in dmesg I see something like:
  [  +1.360001] usb 2-1-port1: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?[  +0.000384] usb 2-1-port1: attempt power cycle(but not the usual message with the USB vendor/device id's like it showed earlier)
  
• If I hold down "-" while plugging it in, nothing shows up at all.
  

I wonder if that means it is "soft bricked"? I assume I would need the breakout board to recover from that, but is there any way for me to confirm that it's not a hardware problem first? Or what would be the next logical troubleshooting step?

(1) This is normal as the main firmware does not implement USB (so the computer will see no response).
(2) The bootloader that you trigger with the "-" is burned into the rom of the MCU so you can erase it (as far as I'm aware).

I would suggest trying a different cable / port if you can first (as some cables are not amazing quality, and the mcu isnt amazing usb driving either i suspect).
Also, try holding the "-" when you plug it in, and then continue to hold it for 10 seconds or so. On some devices I have found that it can take a bit for the ROM to initalise and set itself up correctly.

I have found it helpful to run dmesg -wH to watch dmesg while i connect the unit so i can see whats going on.

Yeah dmesg -Hw is what I have been watching. I've tried at least 3 different cables, on multiple PC's/SBC's/ports. They seem to detect that something was plugged in, but nothing else shows up, even if I keep "-" held down for 60 seconds. And of course "dfu-util -l" doesn't find anything.

[Ralim]

What exactly are you seeing in dmesg when you connect the unit holding "-" ?

[psychedup]

if I connect while holding down "-", nothing at all shows up in dmesg. The only time I see anything in dmesg is if I connect without pressing any buttons, and only after I've left it unplugged for a while.