SD card not working

[sukjinkang]

I'm having trouble getting SD card to work. It trips up at the very first step during initialization. It throws the [ERROR] no SD card message. I feel like I'm missing something basic. Can you suggest some things to check/try please? Even dumb things like "did you push it all the way until it clicks?"

I'm running the unmodified advanced beep-sat. Tried both 8 GB and 32 GB SanDisk cards.

[maholli]

Hi @sukjinkang,

SD card functionality is something I test for when assembling boards, so I'm confident we can get you up and running.

Here are some things to check.

1. Are you using SDHC cards? See the PyCubed Selecting an SD Card page for more details. Make sure your SD cards are formatted as FAT32.
2. Let's start troubleshooting from the simplest condition. Have your configured for standalone benchtop use without any structures or batteries attached. Install the 8GB SD card while the board is unpowered.
3. Connect the board to your computer using the provided USB-C cable, access the REPL and halt the current program with ctrl+C. Once you've entered the REPL, enter from pycubed import cubesat and press enter. Do you still get the SD card error? If you don't see an error, you can confirm by sending cubesat.hardware. It should look something like this:
   • 
4. Still not working? Try a different USB port on your computer. I've had one rare instance where a student's laptop had some strange grounding behavior on only one of their USB ports.
5. Try the same steps with another of your PyCubed boards. If it works we know it isn't a grounding/computer issue.
6. Although you shouldn't need to do this, we can also try slowing the SD card clock speed down. Edit /lib/pycubed.py on your board and adjust the baudrate argument on line 116 to say baudrate=1000000. This will clock the card at 1MHz rather than 4MHz. Reload your board with ctrl+D from the REPL and test again. If that still doesn't work, try going the other direction and setting the baudrate to 6000000.

Gives these things a try and let me know how it goes.

[maholli]

The try catch is still running, it just means something within try failed so it got thrown to except. If you want to see the exact error message, you can comment out the try/except catch and unindent the block. Like this:

How many different boards did you try? All your boards passed their SD card read/write tests with me, so if all of them are reporting they can't see the SD card, then I'm wondering if it's an issue with the SD card, cable, or computer.

EDIT: And just to confirm, the SD card should be installed when the board is powered off and should be inserted until you feel/hear a click. Confirm that your computer can read the SD card.

[sukjinkang]

The error message is OSError: no SD card. I tried two boards. SD card installed correctly, and my computer can read the SD card...

[sukjinkang]

SD cards I've tried: Kingston 4GB HC, SanDisk 8GB and 32GB HC. All FAT32. Communicating with PyCubed board is not a problem. The radio functions well. IMU seems to be working well.

[maholli]

• Those SD cards are fine, shouldn't be an issue there.
• Communication with Radio1 indicates the SPI bus is functioning so the SD card should as well.

The fact that both the boards you've tried have the same behavior makes me think something more systemic is going on. Here are a couple more far-reaching things to try: check that you are using one of the USB-C cables that came with the boards. Remove any USB hubs (if applicable). Have you tried another computer? If it's a laptop, try it with and without the laptop's charger plugged in.

Next steps: I can mail a known-working SD card to you, but I wouldn't bet on that solving anything. Most thorough option is to mail me one of the boards and let's see if I can reproduce the behavior.

[sukjinkang]

I'll try some different cable/computer/power source combinations and report back

[maholli]

Solved ✔

I usually load a known-good build of CircuitPython when doing my initial hardware checks, but it looks like I loaded your boards with the (at the time) latest beta build.

• Turns out that beta build had a bug in the SD card library that was only present AFTER power cycling the board.
• This explains why my hardware checks passed when verifying SD card functionality, but why it wouldn’t work for you.

Solution:

The fix for your other boards should be very easy, we just need to update the firmware.

There’s a PyCubed page on this, but I’ll also walk you through the steps below:

1. Go to https://circuitpython.org/board/pycubed_v05/ and download 7.2.0-alpha (I’ve confirmed this build works)
2. Plug the board into your computer and double-click the reset button (next to the radio)
3. The board should now mount as a “PYCUBEDBOOT” drive.
4. Drag the uf2 you downloaded earlier onto the drive. After the file transfer, the board will reboot on its own.
5. Done! 🎉

To verify the new firmware works:

1. Power cycle the board (unplug USB then plug back in) to make sure we catch any weirdness. Install an SD card while the board is unpowered.
2. From the REPL enter from pycubed import cubesat and ensure you don’t get any errors

Let me know how it goes!

Very unlikely, but if you STILL can’t see the SD card: (expand me)

1. We need to erase the board’s file system.
2. Copy any files you want to keep from the PYCUBED drive.
3. Download and unzip the attached file (for convenience)
   • sdcard_fix.zip
4. Put the board into bootloader mode again by double clicking reset button
5. Copy over erase_m4.uf2
6. The board will eventually restart itself and remount into bootloader mode
7. Copy over the firmware you downloaded earlier from the circuitpython page
8. After rebooting into PYCUBED, copy the remaining contents of the unzipped folder (exclude the UF2) onto the drive. If prompted, overwrite any files. Note you can always find these default software here v05 default software.
9. Verify again