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Hardware and operation

My Pioreactor isn't responsive anymore​

If your Pioreactor stops being responsive (and was previously working),

  • For Raspberry Pi 3A model, is the Pi's green LED constantly on?
    • there should be a short, perhaps caused by damage. Power off, and disconnect the heater PCB's flat-flex cable from the HAT (unlock, and pull straight out), and power on. Is the Pioreactor responsive now? Investigate the heater PCB for damage.

I see a "Pioreactor HAT must be present" error, but the HAT is definitely attached.​

  • Is your HAT directly connected to the Raspberry Pi, or are you using a long cable to connect them? Long cables tend to degrade signals, which can cause communication problems between the HAT and RPi.

I see "The internal ADC/DAC is not responding. Exiting."​

  • SSH into the Pioreactor that's causing problems. Run pio version -v. Does the firmware section say 0.0? If so, run sudo systemctl restart load_rp2040.service. Try pio version -v again. Continue below if firmware still says 0.0.
  • Disconnect the heater PCB's flat-flex cable from the HAT (unlock, and pull straight out). Try pio version -v again. If this shows something other than 0.0 beside firmware, there could be a problem with your heater PCB. Email us at help@pioreactor.com.
  • See section above.

I see "Heating PCB must be attached to Pioreactor HAT" or Heating PCB must be present to measure RPM." errors.​

Check the connection between the 3" flat-flex-cable and the HAT, and the connection on the heater PCB. It's possible that the connector could have been pulled out by accident.

I'm having trouble with Pioreactor's stirring.​

See our stirring troubleshooting docs.