USB device makes BBB fail to boot

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1

Hi all,

I have a Rev C Beaglebone Black that I am trying to use with a Fadecandy device (https://www.adafruit.com/products/1689). When I plug the Fadecandy into the BBB, it is not recognized. No entries appear in dmesg. This is odd, because the same Fadecandy board is works fine with my laptop, before and after being plugged into the BBB.

The really weird part is that if reboot the BBB with the Fadecandy plugged in, the PMIC appears to shutdown just after the login prompt appears on the console interface. All the LEDs on the BBB turn off, and the current drops to zero. If I reboot the BBB with nothing attached, the same thing happens again-- I reach the login prompt and then all the lights go out. (If I detach the debug cable, I can’t be sure that I’m actually reaching the login prompt, but the LEDs do still go out after roughly the right amount of time.)

Eventually, if I reboot the BBB enough times, it recovers. After that it appears to run fine for days.

Anyone have any ideas about what’s going wrong? Anyone else have a Fadecandy working with a BBB?

Brandon

2

How are you powering the BBB ? It almost sounds as if you’re powering by USB, and the BBB is not getting enough power at boot time. Although I do boot the couple I have ( one REV A one REV C ) with ethernet plugged in and active. In fact I load the rootfs via ethernet . . .

However, with that said, with the 3.8.x kernel, I’d expect that you’d get a kernel ooops when hotplugging the device. So maybe that part of USB hotplugging has been corrected with the 3.8.47* kernel ?

How much power does the fadecandy pull ?