The Red Light blinking like nothing else, when i press and hold the USB-C Recovery button

Installation
1

Hi everyone,
I could use a bit of help with my Home Assistant Yellow (CM5).
I followed the instructions from the official guide: Getting Started – Home Assistant Yellow.
However, I’m stuck on Step 3 of the “Running rpiboot” section, it just doesn’t work.
Here’s what I’ve tried:
I pressed the power button and then connected the power (via PoE Ethernet).
The red light starts blinking, but nothing else happens.
I’ve repeated the process multiple times, even holding the button for up to 5 minutes, but no luck.

For setup:
The jumper is set to USB as per the instructions.
The other jumper is on CLS3.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what might be going wrong? I’d really appreciate your help!

Thanks in advance!
Regards Kilian

PS. PoE shouldn’t be a problem, a normal pi runs without any problems

2

Is your POE providing enough current?
I’ve never seen a Yellow, but can you power it directly with a 12V, 2A PSU?

3

Hi, Thanks for the suggestion!
But I’m very sure my PoE can provide more than enough power. (USW Pro Max 16 PoE)
Do you have any other idea?

4

CAT5 or CAT6?
The UniFi USW Pro Max 16 PoE switch can supply a total of 180W of PoE power. When operating at 12V, the maximum current it can provide is 15Amps. (Wow!)

The Yellow wants 12V, 2A.

CAT5 is rated for 500mA, (1.28A at 12V). CAT6 can support IEEE 802.3bt Type 4 which the UniFi specs allow. That is 2A. So, if there is any voltage drop over a long CAT6 cable run, you may be seeing low voltage at the Yellow.

The only way to rule this out is to power the Yellow directly. Or possibly closer to the POE router to rule out cable losses.

5

Thanks for your help.

I used Cat6 and Cat7 cables for the setup. I also have this PSU
This PSU should work, right? It can power a Shelly device without any issues, but if it’s not working here, could there be another issue? (its dosent even blink…)

6

It meets the spec of the Yellow: 12V, 2A. As I said, I’ve never seen a Yellow, but your symptoms sounded a lot like low power. I was hoping someone with a Yellow would have jumped in by now.