My first Pi4B while running OH 4.3.3 died after ~ 4 years. This was not an SD card failure… at power on the green LED never flashes as it normally had and the system does not boot up.
Transplanted the SD card to a new Pi4B and this one failed after only a few months with identical symptoms.
The Pis have heatsinks and fans and are using the recommended 3A power supply.
Questions:
What might be causing the premature failures (not expecting an answer).
The failures have occurred while running normally, not at power on/boot. Even so, would it be worth the time/effort to connect a keyboard and display to the dead Pis and attempt to re-flash the bootloader firmware? Or do I need to just make sure I always have a spare Raspi on hand.
How confident are you that your power supply is actually fully and truly completely healthy?
I’ve pulled my hair out more than once on “defective hardware” throughout my career, only to find the power supply is bad (even though it appears good). A bad PSU can supply show nominal voltage including under nominal load, but the voltage can sag below nominal during a short current demand spikes. Short, as in the kind of thing you’d need a scope to see.
Your second pi may have “worked” with the previous (bad) power supply because its tolerance might have been idiosyncratically different. Your second pi might have failed “after only a few months” because your PSU had further degraded (as they always, always do always). Often degradation is related to electrolytic capacitors
This may NOT be your problem, but it’s an excellent thing to rule out.
I’m not suspecting a power supply issue, but since I have a spare supply I’ll swap it out and see.
If it is a supply problem it must be nasty enough to fry the Pi because normally the green LED should flash during boot and/or display an error code as a sequence of flashes.
Go with a 5 amp power supply or a ups. Many of the power supplies provided in rpi ‘kits’ are cheap and don’t even meet the published ratings. Better to have a bit of overhead and replace the power supply at the slightest sign of trouble.
I’ve just ordered an official 27W supply. Only time will tell so I guess we can close this discussion though I’m surprised no one else reports Pi failures due to bad official power supplies.
While a good power supply is always a good idea, it’s also almost as-never the reason for Pi outages like these. The 3A is only needed if you have HATs with extensive power needs.
Without HATs, 1A will usually do, so unless you only ever use cheapmost Chinese stuff it’s usually not the source of problems when operating it as an OH server.
