New here new to PreenFM, build the PreenFM3

[Robrock]

Hi I'm Rob from the Netherlands, I bought the PreenFM3 kit from van Daal Electronics, good service and very quick delivery from them, ordered monday received wednesday. I built the kit today without a problem, but ran into a problem with flashing the firmware. The webdfu doesn't really recognise the module and after conecting I got the message "Security problem: Acces denied".

I think I will try DfuSE tomorrow, and see if that will work. Another thing is that I'm not quite sure what needs to be on the SDcard. The Build instructions on the van Daal (which are quite good up until that point) says: Copy all the needed files to the SD card. I would like a bit more specific information on that. I unpacked the zipfile 0.100 on the SDcard and then tried to flash the firmware.

When I didn't get past the error code I stopped for today. Any pointers in the right driections are very welcome.

[Xavier]

Hi Rob,

You can find SD card information here :
https://github.com/Ixox/preenfm3/wiki/SD-card

The webdfu doesn't really recognise the module and after conecting I got the message "Security problem: Acces denied".

Can you give more details ?
What do you mean by "after connecting" ? At what step are you in the process ?

What do

[Robrock]

Hello Xavier,

I followed the steps in the wiki in flash te firmware.

I made sure the jumper was in the right place (boot pin - Vcc)
connected the module to usb
opened the webdfu
clicked om connect and in the window there were 4 possibilities all marked as "unknown" or "generic device" or something like that
when I selecteded one that seemed to connect to he PreenFM3 (I checked that by disconneting and reconnecting te USB)I got the message "Security problem: Acces denied)

So clearly the right connection was not established, but I could not figure out what was different from the instructions.

I contacted Ardi, and he pointed me in the direction of this forum. He said he never uses the webdfu application, that he normally flashes the units using the PC,

Your instructions for DfuSE are the route I want to go this afternoon. If you have suggestions what to check first before I go the PC route (reading the instructions it seems that you don't particularly like the software) I would surely like to try that. I double checked all connections several times and I don't have any ideas where it did go wrong.

[Robrock]

OK managed to flash the bootfile with the STMcubeProgrmammer. loaded flashed firmware (i think .99)on the PreenFM3 and then after I reboot the screen went black. When I start up whie holding down the menu button, the text on the screen scrolls very fast, and keeps scrolling as long as I hold down the key. When I release the key the screen goes black again.

I know I'm an absolute noob at this thing, and am doing something wrong but I don't know what . I can use some help to fix this little bug before I can enjoy some sounds

[Xavier]

Did you flash only the bootloader ? Black screen when no key pressed looks like a missing firmware. It tries to jump to the firmware but there's nothing.

Also there's a problem with your control board.
Check you control board to main board connection.

[Robrock]

Hi Xavier, no I thought Iwas on the right path. After the bootfile was loaded, I did flash the firmware and it looked OK until I got the request to reboot. After that I had a black screen, and now I can not go back to the bootloader mode

[Robrock]

I din't know whats happening yet but if I power up through the dc bus the led's go on (back and front) but the  screen is black, but when I put in the USB cable it works and there is sound. So far so good, now i have to find out what is wrong what the power supply.

[Robrock]

So far so good as long I'm on USB. Version 0.100 loaded, so I'm on the latest firmware now.

However, when I put the power plug in the DC bus the blue led on the front, and all the leds on the main board start to flash rapidly and that's it. That puzzles me because before flashing the firmware, when I plugged in the DC bus, the leds where on steady. 

[Xavier]

So far so good as long I'm on USB. Version 0.100 loaded, so I'm on the latest firmware now.

However, when I put the power plug in the DC bus the blue led on the front, and all the leds on the main board start to flash rapidly and that's it. That puzzles me because before flashing the firmware, when I plugged in the DC bus, the leds where on steady. 

The firmware can only control the blue LED.
The orange (5v) and green (3.3v) are directly connected to the power trace.

So it seems you have bad contact around the DCIn socket and the DcIn Jumper.
That's 5 soldering points to check 

[Robrock]

Tried a different adapter(had to dig through a big pile of adapters because most of my adapters are center negative types for guitar stomp boxes) but found one center positive which came with a handheld oscilloscope and that did the trick. So the unit seems to be picky about the power supply. I put a bunch of sysex files in a dx7 folder on the sd card and I'm having a lot of fun already.

Thank you Xavier for designing such a neat and powerfull little unit. I've still got a lot to learn but finding my way on the unit seems  to be pretty intuitive so this is a very promising start

[Robrock]

The strange behaviour of the unit, with the led's rapidly flashing, came from starving the board.

When I ordered the kit, the power supplies were out of stock, otherwise I would have included this in my order. So the first powersypply I used is a multiple output unit for guitar effects pedals, this thing came of a pedalboard and now lives on my workbench.  I  made sure the voltage and the polarity were correct but I didn't look at the mA rating.  The leds came on so I assumed it was OK , it's rated at 600mA but lt is limited at max 120mA per output. So as soon as the software was loaded and the processor started up, the powersupply was insufficient, and starving the board caused this erratic behaviour.

I started it up afterwards multiple times with the 600mA rated single output powersupply and it works every time. Maybe this can be helpfull to others who run into trouble with the powersypply.