Controlblock 2.1 & Retropie 4.3 @RPi 3B: Switching Power on/off not working

ralf

Hello all,

I just tried to get the controlblock running to switch on/off the RPi 3 without any success.
The Retropie version is the latest (4.3).
I followed the instruction on github for driver installation:
https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2#controlblockservice2
After compiling was finished successfully without any error the RPi was shutting down, but not switching off.

I`m using the power supply from my iPad (Apple 12W, if this is interesting).
After unplug/plug this power supply and switching on the toggle switch, nothing happens.
After unplug/plug the micro USB power supply cable (connected to the Controlblock) and then switching the toggle switch, the RPi is booting. LED is blinking and after starting the controlblockservice the LED is running continously. After toggling the switch to off, RPi is shutting down but LED is blinking and the red LED of RPi is still on. The RPi is not switching off. The LED connected to the Controlblock is blinking forever until I cut the power manually.
I have ordered a second one, but it is the same behavior.
At the moment I stopped here with this project because switching on/off the RPi is essential.
Does anybody has an idea what is going wrong here?
What is the difference if I plug in the power supply or plug in the micro USB?
I do not understand that behavior.

Off topic:
What I also not understand is why a Controlblock address has to be soldered instead of using a cheap jumper. Please think about for next hardware release.

ortsac

@ralf Hi
Could you post a picture of the connections on the ControlBlock/RPi?
Does display indicate any error while controlblockservice is booting up?
If the LED on the controlblock is continuously running, it has not finish booting up. How long do you wait before you toggle switch to off?

ralf

Hello ortsac,
I can take pictures next weekend (I'm currently 250km away from RPi).
There is no error while booting. I checked also the syslog and dmesg.
Switch off was maybe 5-10 minutes after booting up. Is that relevant? I assume that if the service is loaded, a switch off is working. This is what I understand from source code.
Are you shure with the LED behavior?
My understanding is following:
While booting it is blinking, if service is loaded then LED shoud continously running, after shutdown signal the LED should blinking with doubled boot blinking frequence. And then it should be off if RPi is powered down. Last step I have never seen.

ralf

I don't know what you want to see here but nevertheless here is the picture:

petrockblog

What SD card image are you using? Your setup looks very clean to me, but it is strange that both ControlBlocks lead to the same wrong behaviour. It is unlikely that both ControlBlock are damaged. With the SD card image information and some details about your setup steps I would try to reproduce the problem on my site.

ralf

This is the link to the image:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/releases/download/4.3/retropie-4.3-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz

I`m using a SanDisk SDSQXCG-032G-GN6MA 32GB Extreme Pro Micro SD and copied the image to the SDHC card on my Linux box:
gunzip retropie-4.3-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz
sudo cat retropie-4.3-rpi2_rpi3.img >/dev/sdf

I created a Wifi setup (modified /etc/network/interfaces, added a key file with SSID and password).

Steps after booting:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y git cmake g++-4.9 doxygen
git clone --recursive https://github.com/petrockblog/ControlBlockService2.git
sudo ./install.sh

The config file /etc/controlblockconfig.cfg is default.

Anything else needed?

I just ordered some additional SDHC cards and will play arround with different images and other RPis. I have also a RPi 2 for testing.

petrockblog

Thanks for that elaborate answer. I need to step through this now.