I have to hold Power Switch

[CameraGuyKurt]

I've tried the solutions presented on the Troubleshooting page you linked to, with no new results. 

As far as the soldering on the Pi, as I said, I'm using the Hammer Header as a solder-free solution. You can refer to the photos I've previously posted. I can also take some new photos with a better camera this evening.

I do have access to soldering equipment. If I tried to solder a GPIO header to the Pi, would you recommend just soldering the Hammer Header in place, or swapping it for a regular header?
I'm open to suggestions.

[Flavor]

Hey Kurt. In my confusion of being gone out of connectivity and then being swamped when I returned, I think I completely missed that you were using a hammer header. Also, I can't seem to view your photos, and I'm not sure what is wrong there.

Could you re-post your photos? I have definitely seen a few people have problems like this with the hammer header. It seems to happen if they hammer part of it too far. Some of the pins might be making a poor connection if they're not far enough in or if they're too far. Either way, that would be an easy fix. You can just turn it upside-down and tap the pins back a bit.

If you can get me some photos, I hope that we can spot the problem. Whatever it is, we'll get it worked out. It's just a matter of narrowing it down.

[CameraGuyKurt]

Thanks, re-posting the photos here. Failing that, let me know another way you'd like me to send them to you.

[Flavor]

I think your dropbox images aren't public, maybe.

Otherwise, you can email them to me. I think you had a support ticket/email thread before. You could just send them there.

[Flavor]

I received an image from Kurt that I annotated.  I'm posting this here, so we have a record for anyone else that comes along.

   

It appears that the circled pins are hammered in a bit too far.  I would use the hammer jig to tap them back in a little bit.  What you want is for the eyelets (of the pins) to be inside of the circuit board via holes.

Kurt, can you try that and let me know how that works?

[CameraGuyKurt]

So I've tried to level out the Hammer Header, as seen below. No change in results.



I had access to soldering gear over the weekend, so I tried soldering a header on another PiZeroW. Sadly, no change in behaviour.



Still open to any suggestions.

[Flavor]

You have tried hammering it better and soldering it all without change. This is rare indeed.

Just to be sure we're still on the same page, if you hold the power button, the whole thing will boot up properly. Is that correct? Once you let go of the power button, the machine instantly dies, right?

You are using the SD image we provide, right?

You haven't edited any files on the SD card, right?

If all that is true, then I think we either have a faulty Pi or a faulty circuit on our Freeplay Zero board.

Do you have access to another Raspberry Pi Zero to try?

If you have a multimeter/voltmeter, I will get Andrew, who laid out the circuit board, to give you a couple tests. We will try to determine if our board has a faulty circuit somewhere. If so, I think we would need to send you a replacement.

[Flavor]

Also, please let me know if you are using a battery or not. If you don't have a battery plugged in, the system may shut down. It's designed to have a battery plugged in during operation.

[Flavor]

Hey again Kurt!

Here is a good test if you have a multimeter than can check continuity (or beep when there's a connection).

   


(NOTE that the wires being shown are just from the multimeter.  They are NOT connected to the battery.  After a second look, we wondered if that might be confusing.)

There should be continuity between the Pi's pin 40 (bottom right Pi pin in the photo) and D1 pin 1 (top left of D1 in the photo).

Also, when Andrew and I were making this photo, we remembered that very early on, we encountered a couple builds that had a bad pin 40 on their Pi.  We think this was from improperly inserting the Pi into the Freeplay Zero pin header.  I don't recall if they were inserted 180-degrees or off by a row or what.  Anyway, the point is that if you ever inserted your Pi improperly and then tried to turn it on, this part of the Pi may have been damaged.

There is a workaround, if you think it could be this problem.  We could try to jump a wire from another pin of the Pi over to pin 40 and make a change to your config.txt file to use the other pin.

Let me know what you think.

[CameraGuyKurt]

Just to be sure we're still on the same page, if you hold the power button, the whole thing will boot up properly.  Is that correct?  Once you let go of the power button, the machine instantly dies, right? Right.

You are using the SD image we provide, right? Correct

You haven't edited any files on the SD card, right? Correct. I had added some ROMs, but I've just tried a fresh version of your SD image and the results are the same.

If all that is true, then I think we either have a faulty Pi or a faulty circuit on our Freeplay Zero board.  

Do you have access to another Raspberry Pi Zero to try? Yes, the image of the soldered header was a different Pi. Sadly, that Pi had the same results.

Also, please let me know if you are using a battery or not. If you don't have a battery plugged in, the system may shut down. It's designed to have a battery plugged in during operation. Yes, as I stated in the original post, this problem occurs when both  batteries are connected, as per the setup tutorial.

If you have a multimeter/voltmeter, I will get Andrew, who laid out the circuit board, to give you a couple tests.  We will try to determine if our board has a faulty circuit somewhere.  If so, I think we would need to send you a replacement. I'll try to borrow a multimeter from work tomorrow, and get back to you.