DigQuad Burning Out ESP32 Controllers

Hardware
1

I have a DigQuad and I powered on the board straight from the static bag. I upgraded the device using OTA update, ran an effect on LED strings and then suddenly the LED lights turn off. Looking at the DigQuad, the board light is on, but the controller light is off. I take off the controller and hook it to a USB-C controller to reprogram, but the controller light is not on and the Com port is not available. Nothing I do can get the power back.

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I put on another wifi Esp32, and the exact same thing happens. I take that controller off and try the same USB-C connection. Nothing, it is not powering on.

I’ve looked everywhere online and there is nothing I can find to help rest the controllers.

Being stupid, I remove a working ESP32 controller with ethernet, I re-program it using the USB-C cable, reprograms fine with the latest firmware. I hesitantly install it on the DigQuad. Everything is working fine. It’s after 10pm, so I decide to leave the LEDs running over night. I go back into the office. Lights are off and WLED is not longer accessible. This time, both light on the controller remain on, but still no access to WLED. I remove the controller attach to the USB-C cable, light comes on and the COM port shows up, but the controller cannot be reprogrammed.

install.wled.me gives the following error (which I tried doing only to get the same error):
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(Note: I have three other DigQuads and four DigUno, and I have had zero issues with any of them and are currently being used in projects around my home)

QuinLed support believes this is something I am doing wrong, but I am not sure why they would come to that conclusion. I have followed the Youtube instructions to a tee each time. Super frustrated.

Anyone have some advice?

2

Just to quickly comment, I did not mean to imply you were doing anything wrong just that we generally like to have a look at these cases in our Discord server so we can real-time talk, share photos of certain parts and measure a few things before we replace boards if they are indeed broken.

75%+ of the time it’s something on the users side or another part of their setup (WiFi issues, broken power supply, wiring, etc.) and in the cases it’s not and the board didn’t die because of user error I happily send out replacements! :slight_smile:

In this case it’s like the ESP32 that’s at fault since we have had one production series which had a component with a higher failure rate (this has since been fixed in a newer revision of the ESP32 board, moving away from that part). If that’s the case, you likely got very unlucky and had two but we need to verify this first.

p.s. When using a Generic Mini32 ESP32 module, please make sure the back of the pins (near the antenna) line up and one row of pins is overhanging at the front since the QuinLED-ESP32 boards have 4x 9 pins vs 4x 10 pins!

But yeah, as said, if you could come to the Discord server, let’s take a look, measure a few of the outputs on the Dig-quad and see what’s going on. :slight_smile:

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No worries. I completely misunderstood. I didn’t know there was a difference between discourse and discord web apps. Apologies. I can delete this from here as it seems to be misplaced support request.

4

Up to you! I’m not about censoring anything. :slight_smile:

1 Like