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Bricked during firmware upgrade?

bmpbmp
in General
My metawear appeared to be working w/ the sample app (could control the LED).  I then went to upgrade the firmware and the app reported a failure during the firmware update process.

Since then, I can still connect to the metawear from the app, but I cannot seem to do anything with it (cannot control the LED, cannot report the temperature or other device information).

Is there any other way for me to debug (via USB perhaps?) whether my metawear is effectively bricked?  Seems like perhaps the BT chip is still powering up, but the rest of the API is dead.

And if it is bricked, suffice to say I think the sample app functionality to update the firmware needs to be yanked asap.


Comments

  • subtillsubtill
    hi there! 

    i got the same scenario: in the beginning everything was working fine, i could controll the LED....But after clicking firmware update the board crashed. No connection since than. And i tried on many ways (different phones, different apps), but nothing. 

    They said, there is no other way to get it debugged than BLE.


    So, what can we do? maybe there is / was an error in the APP....I don't know.

    Did you also use the iphone?

  • bmpbmp
    Nope, I was doing it on android.  In my case it does appear to still "Connect"  (the device shows up as Metawear in the BT device listing, and the app allows me to connect/disconnect it, but i can't do anything w/ it once "connected" which is what makes me think that the only thing still working on the metawear board is the BT chip itself, not the custom firmware providing the metawear api.  but i could be way off, i'm pretty new to this).

    Seems like v2 would do well to include some "i'm alive/i'm charging" status lights (which could be disabled via appropriate api calls).  An off switch and/or reset switch would be nice too.

    At this point i'm waiting for the battery to die in mine in hopes that once it does, perhaps things will reset and it will work again.  No idea how long that'll take.  (desoldering+resoldering the battery to reset it is more effort than i'm prepared to put into such a vague hope)

  • EricEric
    There is a reset command you can issue to the device which will do a hard reset.  The iOS app has a button to do this but I did not add the same button to the Android app.  I will add it in the next app update.
  • bmpbmp
    Hm. I pulled the updated apk from github and my metawear is responding again, not clear what the issue was before however.  Anyway i'm just happy it's not bricked.  Back to coding.


  • EricEric
    What firmware and apk versions were you using prior to the update issues?
  • bmpbmp
    The apk was one i built myself using this commit: 2bac1295e30d019e7ecf569d47762d0e2a8b300d  (which, based on the comment, should be the 2.1 version also... so i'm not sure why there would be a difference.   I was also using a recent metawear api jar)

    Afraid I don't know the firmware level... I had done a firmware update about 2 weeks ago, so it was attempting to update from that (not even sure there was a new one available when i was updating, the i don't get the impression the updater checks that before attempting to update).

  • LauraLaura
    Hey bmp 
    After a firmware update an automatic checksum and reset occurs on the MetaWear devices which can take up to 60 seconds depending on the transfer speed and size of the new firmware file. Please make sure the device is not interrupted during that time. Also, the device will not be connectable or advertise until this process is completed which could lead you to believe that the device is no longer functioning or bricked.
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