Troubleshooting

Device won’t power on

Confirm the 18650 cell is seated with correct polarity.
Check the cell’s voltage independently — over-discharged protected cells can latch off until charged.
Try charging over the magnetic pogo connector for a few minutes before assuming a hardware fault.

Device flashes but never boots past the first second or two

Seen on the lia_v1 custom build (not stock Meshtastic) on the first assembled board: serial output stops right after CPU frequency is set, before LoRa/GPS initialize. See Building the Firmware — Known issues for what’s been ruled out so far (not Bluetooth-related) and the leading suspect (an I2C bus lockup during Meshtastic’s sensor scan — check SDA/SCL pull-ups and whether the IMU/fuel gauge are actually populated on your board).

No GPS fix

See GPS — most “no fix” reports are actually a cold fix taking longer than expected, or testing indoors.
Confirm the GNSS antenna connector is fully seated.

Not visible on the mesh

Confirm the region is set — an unset region silently disables the radio.
Check that at least one other Meshtastic node is within range and on the same channel/region.
Confirm the node role is set to TRACKER — see Meshtastic Configuration.

Battery drains faster than expected

Review the broadcast interval and duty cycle in Power Management — frequent position broadcasts cost real battery life.
Confirm deep sleep is actually being entered (some debug/logging builds keep peripherals awake).