forum.heinrichsweikamp.com

Hello,

Today I had a sad experience with the OSTC3 (#2838) which I finally received yesterday.

The DC worked nicely up to last few minutes of the dive at 6m, when it just shut off. No button could start it up, neither at the depth, nor afterwards.

I have checked both the battery compartment as well as the USB, and both seem to be dry.

I also measured the voltage of the original SAFT-battery, and it was down to ~2.5V. I did not check the battery when I received the DC, but the display said that the charge was 90+%. My understanding was that the shop had very recently received the batch of DCs from Germany.

I tried with a couple of alkali-batteries (which I measured at 1.5V), but the only indication was a quick flash of the red led. I could not find any explanation to what this indicated. If I re-inserted the SAFT-battery then no sign at all.

Is there something else that I can try out, or should I just return the DC to the store where I bought it?

Poltsi

Hello Poltsi,

We always ship with new Saft Batteries, so I doubt the battery is the issue here. Please contact your dealer or us (info@heinrichsweikamp.com) about this issue. I'm sorry about this but I think your unit has some kind of hardware damage and needs to be replaced.

Regards,
Matthias

No worries. I will return the unit to the reseller and have them ship it to you. I would be interested to hear what was the reason though once you have done the diagnose

Poltsi

Any news on the autopsy?

The reason why I ask is that now the second unit (#2662) has partially malfunctioned. And the reason is apparently that (brakish) water has apparently entered the USB port compartment even when I made sure that the lid was screwed on tight. The pins on the USB look tarnished and I am unable to connect the device to PC.

Poltsi

What partially malfunctioned? The USB bulkhead is sealed against the remaining electronics. Besides the corrosion (I'm quite sure you can clean this quickly with some WD40) water in the USB bulkhead will have no effect on the computer.

Regards,
Matthias

heinrichsweikamp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What partially malfunctioned?

The device no longer is detected by the computer (neither Windows nor Linux, FC20 3.16.3-200.fc20.x86_64). It does however turn on normally, and goes into USB-mode when connected. So my guess is that only the data transfer is not working, probably by the damaged pins in the connector.

The curious thing on Linux side is (as I mentioned to DirkH on Subsurface IRC), that I get some log in /var/log/message related to USB when I disconnect the OSTC3, but none when I connect. I can post the loglines later this evening.

> The USB bulkhead is
> sealed against the remaining electronics.

Yes, and I was pretty careful with both cleaning the O-ring as well as closing the screw because I suspected that it could be one of the reasons why the previous DC bricked.

> the corrosion (I'm quite sure you can clean this
> quickly with some WD40) water in the USB bulkhead
> will have no effect on the computer.

I doubt. There is a fair amount of corrosion in the connector, which means that it is well corroded, to the degree that it is also present in the USB-cable head. And it looks like it has been short circuited.

I do have a macro pic of the connector, which I also can post in the evening with the log entries.

I will wait for your feedback re: log and pic before I take any action on cleaning the connector, if it is ok by you?

Poltsi

Poltsi Wrote:
> I doubt. There is a fair amount of corrosion in
> the connector, which means that it is well

We had customers diving a week without the cap (And the unit still was fine). As long as you don't plug-in a powered USB cable into a wet bulkhead this is quite easy repairable.



Regards,
Matthias

heinrichsweikamp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> (And the unit still was fine). As long as you
> don't plug-in a powered USB cable into a wet
> bulkhead this is quite easy repairable.

Alas, this may be what has happened. I did check the compartment itself for any water, but did not look into the connector itself.

Here are the loglines from /var/log/messages:

Oct 27 18:04:05 lanfear kernel: [ 463.893202] usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:05 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:05 lanfear kernel: [ 463.968121] usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:05 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:05 lanfear kernel: [ 464.144004] usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:05 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: [ 464.318038] usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: [ 464.393001] usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: [ 464.557869] usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: [ 464.731768] usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 9 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 9 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: [ 465.133443] usb 2-1.3: device not accepting address 9, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: device not accepting address 9, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: [ 465.206562] usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:06 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-pci
Oct 27 18:04:07 lanfear kernel: [ 465.608256] usb 2-1.3: device not accepting address 10, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:07 lanfear kernel: [ 465.608418] usb 2-1-port3: unable to enumerate USB device
Oct 27 18:04:07 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1.3: device not accepting address 10, error -32
Oct 27 18:04:07 lanfear kernel: usb 2-1-port3: unable to enumerate USB device

And here are the pics for the connector itself:

[img]http://poltsi.fi/Sukeltaminen/OSTC3-USB/DSC_8604.png[/img]

[img]http://poltsi.fi/Sukeltaminen/OSTC3-USB/DSC_8605.png[/img]

The situation has deteriorated from the last time. As I now connect, and disconnect the DC to and from Linux, no log lines are printed in the logfile. The DC still displays the USB mode on its screen, but is periodically 'restarting', eg. I see the bootup screen and then it goes back to USB mode.

FWIW I also tried with another cable, without any difference.

Poltsi

I just noticed the following too:

[img]http://poltsi.fi/Sukeltaminen/OSTC3-USB/DSC_8607.png[/img]

The USB port extrudes into the compartment so much that when you screw on the cap, it scratches the inner surface of the cap.

Could that have created some metal filing which then short circuited the connector?

Poltsi

Hi,

The O-Ring seals radially. When the cap is in line with the bulkhead it's inserted enough.

I don't thing the cap or parts of it has damaged your bulkhead here.

Regards,
Matthias

So, should I still try to use the WD40 on the bulkhead to see if it helps?

Poltsi

Yes, please give it a try.

Matthias

Unfortunately no effect. I've tried with two different cables with the same result:

The DC goes to USB-mode, but nothing in /var/log/messages neither when connecting nor disconnecting. Nor does it matter if I remove and reload the ftdi_sio kernel module.

Poltsi

Getting back on topic

I got the comp (#2662) back from maintenance, and tested that the download works. I closed the cap *as per instruction* and took it for a dive (freshwater) today. During the dive the OSTC3 worked well, and afterwards I immediately dried it superficially and packed it in the HW padded case. At this point the OSTC3 was still on.

When I got home, and unpacked everything, I noticed opening the OSTC3 case that the screen had a dim glow.

The comp was on, or at least the backlight, but the screen did not show anything and the comp did not react to any button presses, in any kind of combination.

Any suggestions, or should I just return the comp back to the retailer?

Poltsi