Recovering Bricked CFs

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GideonL
Beginner
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:14 pm

Recovering Bricked CFs

Post by GideonL »

Hello,

I have been trying to use the Cfclient to update firmware on a few of my CF's. For some reason, the updates have corrupted and the CFs have been bricked. I have tried following the ColdBoot instructions, but I cannot get the bricked CFs to connect to the client. It is worth noting that the bricked CFs were assigned unique radio addresses, which I believe is contributing to the problem. Is there a more direct way to recover the firmware or a script I can run while the CF is directly connected to my machine via USB? Please let me know.
kristoffer
Bitcraze
Posts: 630
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2015 7:47 am

Re: Recovering Bricked CFs

Post by kristoffer »

Hi!

The good news is that it is not (should not be) possible to brick a CF by normal usage or flashing, which means that it should be possible to solve :-)

First of all, Crazyflies can unfortunately not be flashed via USB, you need a Crazyradio.

The procedure from the client is:
1. Turn off the Crazyflie
2. Press the power on button for 3 seconds. The two blue LEDs will flash at around 1 Hz
3. In your client, click Bootloader in the connect menu
4. At the top of the bootloader dialog click the "Cold boot (recovery)" tab
5. Click "Initiate bootloader cold boot"
6. If everything works as expected, the status should change to "Connected to bootloader"
7. Click the "Program" button to flash the latest release

If this does not work, make sure you have the latest officially released versions of the client and python lib.

The other option is to flash from the command line, but I think the client is a better option since it flashes both the NRF and STM in one go.
GideonL
Beginner
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:14 pm

Re: Recovering Bricked CFs

Post by GideonL »

I have tried doing this, but the client will not connect to the Crazyflie. I will check to make sure that everything has been updated appropriately tomorrow when I go back to the lab.
Kaiser1401
Beginner
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2020 11:36 am

Re: Recovering Bricked CFs

Post by Kaiser1401 »

I once "bricked" one by accidentally flashing a wrong binary to the drone (not sure if nrf or cf). I could not get it back to work with the client or normal flashing but had to reflash the bootloader, i think using the debugger interface.

my script i created back then reads:

Code: Select all

echo "Make sure drone is in DFU mode:"
echo "unplug batterie, hold pwr, connect usb, hold 5 seconds longer ..."
sudo dfu-util -d 0483:df11 -a 0 -s 0x08000000 -D cf2loader-1.0.bin
though i am not sure where i got the bootloader binary
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