Apache Labs Community Forum

Hi All,

My Hermes sometime fail to boot. When I push power switch, both front Panel LED lit steady (Status LED not blink as usual). All power LED inside Hermes lite. None of diagnosis LED lite. This I face sometimes. Later after sometime when I restart Hermes, will boot as normal. What could be wrong ??

I power my Hermes from external 13.8V and so 12V and 5V are generated in Hermes itself.

73s

Prem,

This morning without touching anything further, my Hermes started as normal.
So is it anything connected to temperature ?
I have fixed heat sink for FPGA, all power reg IC, LAN chip and ADC chip.

A small 12V fan on top of my box which exhaust inside air out. Also holes on bottom side of box in an intention to have inlet air to box.

Any chip have internal shutdown feature based on temperature ?
My fan switch on/off with Hermes power switch. Means fan off if Hermes power Off.

Running time FPGA heat sink come around 50 deg C and with fan almost 8 deg come down.
Rds,

Prem

Hi Scott,

Any trouble shooting steps to advise on this trouble ??
Now also I get this fault. Fail to boot.

Rds,
Prem

Prem,

The list of things that could be wrong is so very, very long, so I can't even begin to guess. However, if you think it is thermally related, there are 3 PTC type resettable fuses on the board, F1, F2, and F3. You could check those. If you thermally damaged a chip then it could be hard to find.

Good luck!

Scott

Hi Scott,

Since the issue come even morning time try, after a long sleep at night, it is not a thermal issue !!
Once it started, it will run trouble-free for hours.
I did even Tx yesterday with SSB as well as FT8 digital mode.

Anyone have experienced similar trouble, please share our experience in fault finding.

Possibly some dry connection some where ? !!

73s,

Prem

Hi Scott,

Now the LED On are : LED6 (D13) - " Lights when PHY transmit ethernet traffic "
LED10 (D16) - " Lights when a Hermes discovery packet reply is sent"
All Five power LED and front Panel power LED


Any advise on further trouble shooting on boot failure ?

73s,
Prem

I'm sorry Prem. If it is a hardware fault, again the list of possibilities is enormous. There is no way I could begin to even guess.

73,

Scott

Hi Scott,

is there any one else who can be approached at this stage ?

Any suggestion ?

Rds, Prem

No suggestions other than to send your board to someone else who has built their own Hermes and who has the required hardware debugging skills to debug it for you. Obviously it will require careful inspection and analysis of the many signals on the board to isolate the problem.

73,

Scott

Hi Scott,

I was trying to see if any dry soldering between FPGA pins, also did a clean with solution between pins. Now it run ok !!
So it is some dry or short between FPGA pins. Let us see if the issue come again .

73s

Regards,
Prem , A65BK/VU2OLU

Great to hear, Prem! When you build your own boards you are also your own quality control

I bought my own inexpensive assembly/inspection microscope from Amazon in order to avoid those sort of problems. It was money well spent, as it no doubt has prevented many such occurrences on my own projects.

73,

Scott

Hi Scott,

please share the product link you bought.
I have one as seen in below link. but not help me to solder while viewing.

http://www.engtaobao.com/item/taobao/41885659345.html

73s

Prem

This is what I use:

http://www.amscope.com/10x-20x-led-bino ... light.html

I would have preferred a zoom microscope, but this one works pretty good.

73,

Scott

Dear All,

I built my Hermes in 2017 and was using till last week.
One day it suddenly stopped , with status LED stay ON, instead of blinking. Checked all regulator volt come ok. 10, 25 Mhz clock show ok. Instead of 125MHz , I get 122.88 at pin-3.

I tried to reload bootloader (Hermes_Bootloader.pof) using USB blaster thru P2 and flashing shown as completed without error. I used USB Blaster Rev C and Quartus Prime 24.1 Std Programmer.
As a next step, when I try to load "rbf" file using hpsdr bootloader, bootloader and so board details not showing. So not able to load firmware.
Also notice that no signal seen in my 200MHz DSO, at Pin-9 and 10 of U14.
None of debug LED lite.

Please help me to troubleshoot with some guidance tips

Rds,
Prem, VU2OLU

Prem,

Updating firmware I always use SparkSDR https://www.sparksdr.com. Easy use.

Does SparkSDR work for Apache hardware? Is it not Hermes Lite only?

It sounds like the Hermes board has failed somehow.

w-u-2-o wrote: Wed Aug 20, 2025 8:28 pm Does SparkSDR work for Apache hardware? Is it not Hermes Lite only?

It sounds like the Hermes board has failed somehow.

HL2 it works.

Prem does not have an HL2.

Will Status LED blink only with bootloader? Before loading firmware?

Take a look at this topic: viewtopic.php?p=18145&hilit=hermes+led#p18145

Thanks Scott.
Now it is well clarified thet even if boot loader only running, we should get status LED and some other debug led lite. Now In my case, none other than power LED lite now. Pls guide the best way to reflash bootloader. I did using USB blaster with P2 connector and currently available Quartius program. Loaded "Hermes_bootloader. pof" file downloaded from hpsdr site. The flashing completed without showing any error. Later hpsdr bootloader not detecting my board or bootloader. Request someone to share a copy of bootloader to try here. If, somehow I have used a wrong file. !??
Can we load this bootloader pof file in some other way, like using clip on socket over to 8 pin eeprom chip directly? I had done this methode for one of my projects, (not sure for Hermes board).
Can anyone tell the minimum requirement for the status led or some debug led to lite? Ofcourse, fpga to function. What else?

As per schematic dgm, 125 oscillator pin 3 to show 125 Mhz. But I get 122.8 in my 200MHz Hantek dso.
Pls support to troubleshoot my Hermes further.

Rds,

Prem
VU2OLU

I've never had to program the Bootloader over JTAG before, however I found this document on the original openhpsdr web site that describes the procedure in detail:

https://openhpsdr.org/beta/Hermes_Programming.pdf

I was following the same document. Booloader flashed using usb blaster. Next in hpsdr, booloader and so hermes not detected.
Today I checked with chat gpt openion. They asked to check below pins to get high, if fpga run bootloader.

1.nconfig pin25
2.nstatus pin 17
3. Config done pin 153

I got pin 25 1.3v instead 3v3.
Other two pins at 0V.
So AI suggest as fpga faulty.
Can we relay on this and proceed for a fpga replacement??

Rds,
Prem

Prem wrote: Fri Aug 22, 2025 6:20 pm
Can we relay on this and proceed for a fpga replacement??

Not sure what "relay on this" means, but AFAIK there is nobody doing FPGA replacements on any Apache hardware. I could be wrong about this.

The good news is that it is possible with reasonably low risk. Since the original Hermes uses an FPGA with a PQFP package, not a BGA, it is within the capability of a moderately skilled surface mount technician.

Also, Apache is no longer building the 16-bit Hermes cards.

Reminder: I am not an Apache employee or agent of any kind, just the lowly administrator of this website.

Hope someone from this group can guide me further. I had hand soldered this Hermes board in 2017. But now, I am not so confident to do it now. Will get it done by some mobile or laptop repair technician. But before that need to be sure fpga is the reason for failure of board.

I think not many people see my request

Rds,
Prem

It's not that people aren't seeing your request, it's that very few people know how to diagnose a good or bad FPGA.