Ringo restarts every time I hit the "home"button

Just finished assembling the Ringo with my 9 year old daughter. The phone came on as soon as the battery connected, and the screen goes to the setup mode (after you press A) with the button tests screen. As soon as we hit the “home” button we hear a bearly audible high pitch tone coming from the speaker and the phone reboots. The high pitch tone is audible as long as you press the home button. The only accident that I could spot that she had while soldering is she touched the item in the top right corner on the back (next to the screw), where is says WS2812B - the black color from the black outer plastic is a bit melted, but everything seems in tact. I have attached some photos.
I thought it was a problem with the soldering or the button, so I double checked all the soldering, and even tried with a spare button - same results. Any other ideas where the fault might lie?

Hello there,

Thanks for supporting our project and contacting us here! :smiley:

As I can see in the pictures, there are multiple solders that aren’t really the way they should be.
When soldering pads, you should make sure that the whole “golden” area is covered and that you get the “volcano” shape. I’ll attach the image so you can see exactly what I’m talking about.

Each and every one of soldering joints needs to be nearly perfect or it might cause the phone to do weird things like that.

Please, re-work each joint that doesn’t match the image and I’m sure you’ll get rid of all of your problems. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Robert

Hi @robertCM thanks for your reply. I redid all the soldering, same results. Also, I noticed that when starting up it says charger connected even though no charger is connected… When the battery runs empty, you also here the very faint high pitched sound from the speaker like when you press the home button. And by the way, the phone does not turn off, so that also doesn’t work. Put together a second Ringo today and that one does not have any issues at all. Therefore I strongly suspect a hardware issue somewhere.
Attached are the new pictures after resoldering.

@robertCM heard on the news last night that there was an earthquake in Croatia, hope you all are OK.

Hey,

Firstly, thank you for the concern, we’re all fine and well. Luckily, the earthquake happened during the early morning hours in the middle of quarantine, so there we’re many people on the street.

Now, back to the phone - there are still a couple of solder joints that can be fixed. Remember, even ONE can cause weird things to happen, so pretty much everything needs to be perfect. I want to rule out this potential issue before replacing hardware parts that might actually work. :slight_smile:

I’ve circled a couple of joints that can be fixed so please do that, and if it still doesn’t work as intended, we’ll send you the replacement. :smiley:

Cheers,
Robert

Hi Robert, glad to hear you are all ok. I’ve redone all the joints you highlighted, but the result is still the same.

Hey,

Okay, it seems that there is something wrong with the hardware then. I’ll hit you up in the DM with the details so we can repair the device!

Cheers,
Robert