B.S. Node 2i brick (yet another one)

I have had an entire house full of Bluesound for the last 5 years and have had nothing but issues with almost all of the units.  BS said it was wifi so I hard networked most of the units and problems persisted. The good news is that after all this time I have finally had zero glitches for the last 2 months. The red light problems were a feature BS added after the 2i came out. It is related to software updates and the units getting hung up. A factory reset will not fix it. Reloading the firmware online or from a usb stick fixes it. Sometime it takes a few tries. I've had 5 devices red light, some multiple times and every one has been cleared by firmware update. I had a new Node2i that red lighted after a couple of weeks and I sent that back before I found out how to fix this.

In my setup, I have found the root cause of the static noise problems, the volume going full on or full off, groups failing to output sound, groups getting out of sync, are all bugs that are related to using the Bluesound App that everyone raves about. Using the buttons on top of the device to select playlists or change the volume causes problems as well. Tried Amazon music and even down graded Tidal to Hifi just to make sure that hires or MQA were not causing the problems. 

Currently I only use the BS App to set up groups and never touch it again, and never touch the buttons on the units.  Tidal Connect is the only app that communicates with the nodes/speakers and we have not had any issues for over 2 months. We used to have some sort of issue almost daily. Any issues that have come up now are Tidal related due to the Tidal app resetting itself  (Tidal does not like my older i devices) and having to reload/restart a playlist. 

The main reason that Bluesound was chosen in the first place was for whole house sound and CD quality. It's taken 5 years to get it to work and only because of Tidal connect. I'm not a huge Tidal fan, but other than Spotify there are no services with a working "connect" feature that I am aware of. 

Went through factory reset twice. First time stuttered the went to buzzing within a minute. Second time failed to connect to node at all. Wii try again at weekend when have more time

Pieter

i sent 3 IFI Zen Streams back, no problems with the Node.

Hate to see anyone have problems but never read such a long thread for 600 bucks.  Hopefully you get it sorted out.

@2psyop You are amazing! I cant wait to see if its my power supply or the main board that is at fault. Thank you SO MUCH!!

@mofimadness FWIW, I cant do the factory reset because I never get the red light at the top - its that dead!

@larry5729 I coincidentally ended up near them yesterday and went in.. they said the same thing any salesman of BS products will say - "wow we’ve been using their units for 10 years and not a single failure... contact the manufacturer.."

@vint_age I’ve heard this a lot, even from my dealer. There have been a lot of problems with the app, but I think, in general, most of the bugs are sorted. Mine from a software perspective has actually been ok, but I am not using all of the features really. I rely on tidal for most of the UI stuff and only really use the bluos app for volume. With all of that said, I did have to occasionally pull the plug and reset the node because it locks up, maybe 1-2x a month.

@marco1 $600 is a lot for some, and not a lot for others. :) Plus, its good to share this info for others downstream.

@riccitone I have another thread going in search of a replacement streamer for the node (In the event 2psyop's replacement PS doesn't help). I have some particular requirements for said device..The zen has no optical input.  https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/looking-for-2-1-digital-preamp-recommendation