WS5500-EVB-PICO unreliable

I have 14 of these boards, of which 2 work as expected and the others will only get an IP address 1 in 10 times.
Programming using arduino IDE, just running the example dhcp printer code. The only modifications I’ve made is giving them unique mac addresses.

I normally have to reboot multiple times to get an ip, other wise the green and orange lights just alternate.

I’ve tried multiple cables and routers, so am confident it’s a board/code issue.

Can anyone offer some advice?

What does it mean, can you elaborate?

I get a single green flash about half a second, followed by a single orange flash for half a second, this then repeats every 2-3 seconds.

After several restarts, they go to the normal solid green and orange showing data.

Pressing the reset button doesn’t fix it, it has to be a full power cycle if that helps.

You said “WS5500-EVB-PICO”, is it “WS” or W, because Wiznet product’s name is W5500-evb-pico? Where did you buy the modules? Who manufactured them?

Apologies, that’s a mis-type. It is the W5500-EVB-PICO, bought from PiHut in the UK.

First of all, check power supply voltage and current. See requirements for the board and W5500 chip in its datasheet. Then check the way you perform chip reset - hardware and software. For LEDs to turn on properly you only need live cable in and proper chip reset. You do not need to “configure” the chip, therefore this code may be left aside for now to ensure you do not do something causing the behaviour you encounter.

1 Like

Thanks for your reply. Following through to try and work out how to reset the chip, I discovered on the schematic that the W5500 reset pin was connected to GP26. Unlike the other pins, it is not marked that it is internally connected on the board, so have been using it as an output for my project. I still haven’t fully solved this issue, but hope this will help someone else in the future.
Maybe an update to the silkscreen would help.

One strange observation is that if the PICO is powered via the USB connected to the PC, it boots and connects to the ethernet just fine. Now if I power it externally via 5v it will not detect the ethernet cable about 50% of the time.
I believe there is some issue in the USB port of W5500 if left unconnected.? Any body seen problems like this ?

Current rating? Power is characterized not only by the voltage, but also by current it can supply to the consumers.