Proffieboards heating up and draining battery within 24 hours

Hello,

I am posting on behalf of myself and a customer who so far has 3 proffieboards overheating and draining batteries.

Two TXQ proffie lightsabers were purchased. Soon after delivery they were both flashed with OS7 and a new config. It was observed that the CPU was getting quite warm while connected to the PC (A 2020 razer blade15 gaming laptop). Since this point, batteries seem to drain within 24-30 hours.

The cable used was this one https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0C28T7TYS?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

The usb port used was the top right port on the laptop. I can’t find much info other than i bleieve it’s usb 3.1.

Note: Upon delivery the batteries were not drained completely suggesting the issue was not in full effect, if at all, during shipment (2 weeks)

An attempt was made to flash back to OS6 and an original TXQ config but this did not change anything.

Yesterday two replacement cores arrived which were tested in the factory and reportedly had no heat issues.
The batteries were in the 80%+ range upon arrival and no heat was apparent with an initial inspection.

One saber was again connected to the laptop and heat was observed. A flash was done and the saber is now draining battery again and is warm.

The final core, #4, was not connected to the laptop and seems fine.

What might we have done here?

Here is the config just in case.
config.h (43.0 KB)

Short answer: I don’t know what happened.
Boards should generally not get warm, and the CPU should never get warm.
I don’t know if TXQ does anything weird with their cores that could make this happen with a regular config. (The config file looks fairly normal to me.)

You could try copy the config from the working core to the one that drains the battery using this:

However, if the problem is the cable, or the USB port, then you might end up causinga problem with core #4, even without trying to program it.

Thanks for the information on backing up a proffie. I will definitely use that in the near future.

We did try to restore os6 Configs but nothing seemed to stop the heat. The heat was also present almost instantly after connecting to the board, not even necessarily flashing

We took a chance yesterday and the customer used a different cable, this time successfully. Multiple config flashes without any heat.

Seems the cable is the culprit, unless there were three bad cores in a row which is unlikely as core 3 was an updated chassis design so not at all likely to be consecutive proffies off the production line.

I don’t really know how or why the cable would cause this, but it’s the only thing left. I’d love to know how.

I don’t know how the cable could do this either.
I didn’t think shorts on the USB cable would really do anything to damage the board, but bad cables find a way I guess?

2 Likes

maybe a shorted negative and positive. yeah who knows.