No drone firmware. Red light on camera + noise

[roscarob3]

Hi guys,
On my PS3 I had the bad idea of doing a firmware downgrade. I had version 1.7.90+ and I wanted to move on to 1.5.7
To do the operation I followed This post.

Unfortunately the downgrade was not successful and stopped before 100% , now I've uncontrollable drone, if i check the firmware versions show N/A

I tried to load other firmware by putting them on the SD card but after a few seconds it stops and starts emitting this noise and red light on the gimbal (see video)

Can you help me? I also upload the log file and update result P3C_FW_RESULT_AB file
Thanks

 

[roscarob3]

Please help us

 

[quaddamage]

I had exactly the same problem, nobody has an answer...

There's a lot of people here who can read the logs and get to conclusions. You just did not provided any logs.

The latest log entry in this case is:

 [00015217]========== remo-con disconnect. boot(15) ============
[00015293]Packet [C:\P3C_FW_V01.09.0200.bin] detected, card sn [0x0058d4de].
[00015363]Packet upgrade start...

[00015436]Packet checking...
[00015538]Packet vlink 01.09.0200 <-> 00.00.0000.
[00015610]Record vlink 01.06.0080 <-> 01.05.0070 (flow = 0).
[00015685]Done.

[00015756]Version checking[1]...
[00015834][04 00][00] v1.51.0.0 -> v1.51.0.0
[00015996][11 00][00] v2.0.0.33 -> v1.8.0.0, firmware v2.0.0.33 not support.
[00016071][11 00][00] v2.0.0.33 -> v1.8.0.0
[00016219][11 01][00] v2.0.0.33 -> v2.0.0.33
[00016295][01 00][00] v1.14.4920 -> v1.14.4920
[00016372][01 01][00] v1.14.4920 -> v1.14.4920
[00016500][03 05][00] v34.2.0.9 -> v34.2.0.9
[00016597][03 06][00] v2.4.20.50 -> v2.4.20.50
[00029170][07 00][00] device not detected.
[00029288][09 00][00] v0.1.1.1 -> v0.1.1.1
[00029423][12 00][00] v5.9.0.0 -> v5.9.0.0
[00029581][12 01][00] v5.9.0.0 -> v5.9.0.0
[00029833][12 02][00] v5.9.0.0 -> v5.9.0.0
[00029984][12 03][00] v5.9.0.0 -> v5.9.0.0
[00030059]Packet upgrade failed at version checking.

So we clearly see that module [07 00] is not responding.

Here's some basic info on what the modules are:
O-Gs wiki: drone inner workings intro

Here's the list of modules they described:
O-Gs wiki: DJI Firmwares

So as you probably noticed, module m0700 is not there. Well, pity.


But wait, we have the dji-firmware-tools and we can check the module ourselves:

In supported_firmwares_xv4.csv, I found a link to download P3C_FW_V01.09.0200.bin.
Then I can extract it:

dji_xv4_fwcon.py -vvv -x -p P3C_FW_V01.09.0200.bin

We have an unknown binary file for m0700 now. The first thing we always do on unknown binary is to try:

file P3C_FW_V01.09.0200_m0700.bin
strings P3C_FW_V01.09.0200_m0700.bin | less

First command didn't gave as anything - it just said the file contains "data", which basically means it's not in any known file format.
The second command gave us a lot of strings. And on the very top is "MIPS OpenWrt Linux-3.10.49".
If we google that - OpenWRT is a project for creating open-source firmware for wi-fi routers, and MIPS is a CPU architecture.

So this is a firmware for a WiFi chip. If I remember correctly, antennas on P3C are connected to Gimbal Top Board. Let's check it:
O-Gs wiki: P3C Gimbal top board programming
And - the 0700 is listed there. So we've found the board which is damaged, and the specific chip which causes the issue.

Now I won't start digging on how to re-flash OpenWRT on that chip; but as I've shown, everything is easily doable and just requires some initiative. OpenWRT project itself has pages on flashing many of the supported chips.

Since the findings we did here are not fully on O-Gs wiki, I will write an e-mail to mefistotelis from the O-Gs asking to add that info. If I share my findings, they're also open and share their knowledge.

 

[roscarob3]

I await your news, I hope to resurrect the drone

 

[quaddamage]

While there will probably be some more info on the O-Gs wiki when it's updated, I wouldn't wait for a ready solution. You should either figure it out on your own, or just replace the whole board.

They were mostly focused on the fact that OpenWRT is under GPL license, and therefore the use of it in a product without providing the exact source code which is inside, is a license violation.

 

[roscarob3]

Thank you quaddamage for your reply.
Unfortunately I don't have the skills to replace the board.

Do you have any idea how much the replacement can cost?