Vantrue X3 - firmware flashing

[DarrenBaker]

Hi all,

I've been lurking around these forums for a few days now, trying to find out just how to flash firmware to my Vantrue X3, an A12-based camera.

A few days ago, I managed to telnet into the camera by connecting to the AP being broadcast by the camera. I tinkered around with the /pref/wifi.conf file and managed to get it into STA mode, which was cool. Then, every few boots, the thing would panic and revert its WiFi settings back to AP mode.

In order to prevent this, I overwrote every wifi.conf file in the filesystem with my modified version, in order to ensure it'd always connect in STA mode. In doing so, it completely lost its ability to turn on the WiFi at all, so now I can't connect to it in any way (except for Mass Storage mode).

I have attempted to flash the firmware found on the Vantrue website, placing the AmbaBootFW.bin and AmbaSysFW.bin files onto a freshly formatted FAT32/ExFAT card, and rebooted the camera - at no point does it appear to try to do a firmware update.

I've also attempted to place a wifi_supplicant.conf file and a wifi.conf file in the root of the card, as well as within the MISC directory, to no avail. I've also attempted to upload firmware files to the camera in recovery mode, again to no avail.

Anybody have an idea how I could accomplish either a) getting access to the Linux filesystem without WiFi, or b) getting it connected to WiFi again, or c) flashing the firmware?

Thanks!

[nutsey]

Hi,

You can try this: https://www.goprawn.com/forum/ambare...=3288#post3288

[DarrenBaker]

Yeah, I've tried the autoexec.ash method, but it appears that the camera won't allow for that. I tried making one with one command to do ls -l > dir.txt, and it just won't do it. The camera works totally fine, except that it won't connect to WiFi, or present an AP to be connected to. And it won't flash the manufacturer's bin files. I'm stumped.

[nutsey]

I tried making one with one command to do ls -l > dir.txt, and it just won't do it.

Try 'touch /tmp/SD0/itworks'.

[DarrenBaker]

Try 'touch /tmp/SD0/itworks'.

Still nothing. One interesting thing to mention, however, is that when I put the AmbaBootFW.bin and AmbaBootSys.bin files on the SD card, both bin files are deleted after the camera boots, as though it used them to flash the firmware (but no message appears, and there's been no change in the config). It's very weird.

[nutsey]

An empty file named 'KeepUpgradeFile' at the root of your memory card should help with disappearing files.

[DarrenBaker]

I was able to work around that by marking them read-only, but it didn't result in any changes.

[nutsey]

Maybe this will do: https://www.goprawn.com/forum/ambare...2513#post12513

[petesimon]

are you able do download ELF firmware files from the official website or somewhere else?
if so, you could use a Windows computer to load firmware via a USB cable.
https://www.goprawn.com/forum/ambare...5330#post15330 |and| https://is.gd/unbrickambarellaa12cameras
- adapt the instructions for your camera.

[DarrenBaker]

So I managed, somehow, to get it back into STA mode, and all is well again. In reference to your advice about "KeepUpgradeFile", are there other config files that can be placed in the root directory to have an effect?

Thanks!

[nutsey]

Seems like the 'usb.console' file should also work.

[DarrenBaker]

What does "usb.console" enable? I threw it in the root folder and nothing appears to have happened...

[nutsey]

I don't know found it near that 'KeepUpgradeFile'...

[DarrenBaker]

Oh... Where are you finding these references? Inside the .bin?

[nutsey]

Dead right!

[DarrenBaker]

I've been trying to parse the bins and the script files in the OS itself, trying to figure out why the camera won't flash a firmware file in the root dir of the SD card, but *will* erase those files. My best guess is that it knows the version numbers match, so it aborts. But this would be silly behaviour, because there's many reasons for someone to want to to re-flash the firmware. Do you know where in the filesystem the mechanism for flashing is? Or how to access the bootloader?

PS. I've been trying to write a script to synchronize the hwclock with the ntpd, but I absolutely cannot get hwclock -w to sync. Any idea what's going on?