Firmware update not working -- USB light not blinking?

[lookoutjames]

I have a old-ish kickstarter gechologic (the circuit board says 'PICKUPS' and not 'LINE IN') that I've not updated the firmware of before. I'm trying to update it with the windows app (version 0.61b) following all the various instructions, with no success.

When I plug it into the computer, the USB light blinks twice, then twice again, then twice more, then is dark. The RDY light flashes as normal. It's definitely recognised as a USB-SERIAL CH340 (on COM4) so I'm pretty sure I have the correct device drivers installed.

When I run the app (whether or not I run it as Administrator), and click through to update the firmware, I always get the 'Could not retrieve firmware version from Gecho' message. The USB light doesn't flash at all in-between the 'Please make sure...' and the 'Could not retrieve...' messages.

Am I doing something wrong, or should this all be working? I don't really want to have to resort to the manual firmware flash process if I can help it.

[mario]

Hi! If your serial number is above 27 then it's a final production board and should work with the app. And if the app opens without warnings, that means the board was detected.

The USB LED is driven independently (by PC drivers) and is not necessary blinking later even though communication happens. This also proves that you have correct drivers and privileges.

It sounds like an abnormal behaviour, any chance you could record a short video and share via PM or email? I don't think you are doing anything wrong, once you get the app running and RDY blinking, the update usually just works. Would be good to see how exactly the board and app behaves, chance is I may notice something that indicates a hardware problem.

There is a simple enough way how to flash the binary manually even if existing firmware is corrupted and therefore not talking to the app (if that's the case). You could download the binary here and then use this tool.

[lookoutjames]

Thanks for your message. I've taken a video of switching the gecho on and trying to update its firmware and hopefully you can see it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q2zf7zhtj06exsc/IMG_2137.MOV?dl=0

The app opens without warnings whether or not I have the board plugged in, which seems wrong from what you mentioned. Is that what you'd expect? Could I maybe have some other USB device plugged in that's being mistaken for the gecho?

I did try to use the codes 112233 and 223344 (from http://gechologic.com/manual) to get my firmware version/serial number, but they didn't seem to do anything useful (there was a very brief flash from one of the top LEDs but that was it). Were they added in later firmware?

Let me know if the video sheds any light on it. If you want me to take another one focussing on something else let me know. Otherwise I guess I could just use that other update tool directly.

[mario]

This is very suspicious indeed In the video it all looks good. The App definitely should complain when you don't have Gecho plugged in, I just tested it in my computer with v0.61b freshly downloaded from the website.

Any chance you have something else plugged in that might use the same driver? I would not think you are leaving your Arduino permanently connected but some other random device that uses USB-serial. If you look into control panel, you should see it (as shown in the first picture here). That would explain it, Gecho app finds first thing that looks familiar and tries to communicate with it.

It would be interesting to know if it was that. I should make it smarter and let it go over all active ports if more found, until a valid response is received.

The manual update utility will work fine as you can tell it to use the other virtual COM port.

And yes the commands for s/n and version were added later (by the way not too useful right now but you can check what applies to your firmware by looking at legacy manual version, links are at the bottom, i guess this one is for you: http://gechologic.com/manual_v193)

[lookoutjames]

I don't have anything with the same driver but I do have two other COM ports ('Communications Port' on COM1, and 'Intel Active Management Technology' on COM3). The Gecho appears as COM4. If I disable the COM1 port (from the device manager) I do get an error from the app about being unable to open COM1 properly. Does the app actually search for CH340 devices, or does it just enumerate the COM ports and use the first one it finds?

Allowing you to select a COM port from the gecho app would be really useful at this point! I can't easily switch around such that the gecho appears on COM1 because the other two ports are present from system startup.

I'll look into the manual update utility then, if I can select COM4 directly from there.

Thanks for all the help!

[mario]

Thank you for looking further into it, it's really helpful. Just checked the source code and originally it was looking specifically for "USB-Serial" type of COM ports but later it was changed to just go over all ports, I vaguely remember this was changed as on some systems the virtual COM port was showing under a different random name and therefore wasn't detected. It looks for all "active" ports, whatever that means - I guess the problem is that a hardware type port is always active no matter if something is plugged into it.

The "auto-detect" might still work as intended, just needs to check if there is a meaningful reply from the device... but will add a manual override anyway, it's easy enough. Meanwhile, hope you will be more lucky with the manual update process!

[lookoutjames]

Yes, the manual update worked, eventually. I got a few repeated errors, either 'cannot erase flash' or 'cannot download image', but it seemed to take eventually and now it's working on the new firmware.

[mario]

Great stuff! Hope you like the new functions! More to come, I will fix the app soon