Powerblock - Shutdown works great, LED is working great, but Sudo Reboot just turns off Pi 4

[moopcat]

Hi,

I am running this on a Pi 4 and bought the powerblock board yesterday. Running Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster), clean build with only additions is my HDMI screen, hifiberry dac+ pro and powerblock.

I had to remap the port for the shutdown pin to 16 (shutdownpin=16), this is because I am also using a hifiberry dac+ pro which uses GPIO 18 for PCM CLK I believe. This was done in /etc/powerblockconfig.cfg and after a reboot all was well with the sound again. statuspin=17 was left alone as this is not used by another device.

The shutdown works flawlessly along with the LED I have added.
It is just the restart from BASH that is not behaving as I would have liked. It appears as if the Pi 4 initiats a safe powerdown, you can see the log showing this is occuring and then it attempts to restart but the power appears to be terminated before it can get very far.

Is this expected behaviour?
I did remove the hifiberry dac+ pro card and test it with the default GPIO (18) and the same behaviour occurs.

Thanks for any input anyone can provide.

Happy with it as it is, just would like the option to be able to restart it if possible rather than have to manually switch it back on each time.

[petrockblog]

Hi! I would like to reproduce your observation, but I am not sure that I understand correctly what you are doing. Can you maybe post a picture of your hardware setup?
With "restart from bash" do you mean that the Pi is running via PowerBlock and you manually execute shutdown -r now without pressing the power button?

[Paul_UK]

I have observed this as well. I think the OP is referring to the command:

sudo reboot

Normally this would shutdown the pi and restart it. With the controlblock fitted it shuts down the pi, which presumably causes the CB to cut the power. To get it to restart you have to hit the CB power button.

[petrockblog]

I am afraid that you need to switch it back each time. The PowerBlock only listens to a certain GPIO signal that cannot be manipulated for the reboot process AFAIK.
Theoretically, I could be possible by modifying the current firmware of the PowerBlock and reprogramming it, if you are into that ...

[kmk]

@petrockblog I would like to add this as a feature request as well. Raspberry Pi I use is in another room upstairs and I would like to be able to work on it remotely and reboot when necessary instead of having to go up and turn it back on each time. Once configurations on it are settled, it probably won't be as much of a trouble, but powerblock & controlblock is not just a good Retropie addition but also fixes an oversight on part of Pi foundation not including power control capability. Instead of a mostly useless second HDMI output they should have added ability to control power instead.