A. POWER LIGHT IS BLINKING Green&Orange
In firmwares lower that 1.5.270 there is present a bug in the kernel nand driver which can cause a corruption of the jffs2 file system, making the unit to hang at boot when it’s mounting the rootfs_data mtd.
It seems that the corruption is happening when the unit is unplugged from the battery pack. Because of this we’ve added a POWER OFF feature in the new firmware. So before disconnecting the battery pack keep pressed for 5 seconds the HELP button and wait 5 seconds after your see all light turning off (excepting the Power light which will be solid green) then unplug the battery pack.
In case your unit, has Internet connection and it’s POWER LIGHT is FLASHING GREEN AND ORANGE for more than 15 minutes it’s possible that you’re affected by the bug.
In order to fix your unit you can follow this guide :
NOTE : doing this won’t fix any other issues like ZWave not working/ZWave No-Dongle etc
Try to restore you unit firmware following this tutorial, if you are unable, then follow the bellow steps and be sure at the end to upgrade your firmware to the latest version!
Turn OFF wireless or any other connection that your computer might have(blue-tooth/virtual Ethernet etc)
Connect your computer directly into the LAN1 port of the Vera3 unit
Plug the power adapter in Vera and when the red light starts blinking, press and release the RESET button.
You should notice the power led to start flashing green&orange faster.
Put a static IP on your computer (192.168.1.2) and the gateway 192.168.1.1 (subnet mask will always default to 255.255.255.0 - so leave it like that)
Open a command prompt / terminal and run the following commands :
5.1. ping 192.168.1.1
if you receive a reply continue, else power cycle you Vera unit and retry step 3
5.2. telnet 192.168.1.1
if you don’t have telnet, please install it accordingly to your OS
After you’re connected to the unit through telnet you should see a command prompt like this :
[tt]root@(none):/#[/tt]
In there run these commands:
flash_eraseall -j /dev/mtd7
sync
echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
Now the Vera unit should reboot and you should see it booting up. It might take a couple of minutes, first the POWER LED should be solid orange, then blink green&orange slow when it’s booting and after that green solid when it finished booting up.
Change your IP address back on automatically or 192.168.81.2 and gateway 192.168.81.1
Check that the Dashboard loads on 192.168.81.1 after all the LEDs are on and solid green
Now your Vera unit is reseted to factory defaults and is running the same base firmware and MiOS firmware as it was before, so you should :
first upgrade your firmware by visiting : [url=http://cp.mios.com/firmware]http://cp.mios.com/firmware[/url] and then on the new version
restore a previous backup of your unit from your account (cpui5.mios.com(be sure to login) → Setup → Backups).
B. POWER LIGHT IS SOLID Green (optional USB1 led can blink)
If from the time you plugged the power cord into your unit only the POWER light has lit green (optional USB1 led can blink) and no other leds are light up/blinking,
it’s possible that your unit kernel mtd partition is corrupted and the bootloader can’t load any OS from the flash.
In order to recover your unit you need to re-write the firmware on the unit from the bootloader using this tutorial.
C. ALL LIGHTS ARE SOLID Green
Each Vera3 unit has to pass a testing process in the factory which will confirm that all leds, buttons, zwave and networking modules are working. In order to mark the start of this process the unit will light up solid green all its leds and will hang the boot process until this test pass with success all the steps. In case this happens please contact support and mention how the unit get in this state and from where you bought it.
D. ALL LIGHTS ARE OFF
If you’ve connected the correct power adapter (12V 1A) to your unit and this is plugged into a working socket, it’s possible to have a defective power supply or Vera unit. Please try a different power adapter which has the same polarity/voltage or contact sales for a RMA.
I read one of your older post that said “If you’re more techie you can open the Vera3 unit and connect a serial cable (57600 8N1) to it and watch the boot process” I have connected to the Vera 3 via a 3.3v serial-usb board. I can watch the boot sequence in terminal. My issue is, I don’t think I have the encoding set correctly (unless it is unicode and the code is not in english). Can you give me any tips?
Out of the box, my Vera 3 only shows a constant green power light. I have left it powered on for hours with no change. I get no response from lan1 when I ping sweep 192.168.1.XXX or 192.168.81.XXX. Double tapping reset does nothing.
Also, I noticed if the unit is powered on while holding the z-wave button, the USB 1 light flashes. Is it possible to download firmware and flash it via USB1?
I don’t know what terminal client are you using, but
on Windows with putty and default settings is working
on Linux with microcom and default setting si working
You don’t have to change the encoding in them. In your case I assume that you don’t have the correct wires set.
If you’re using and USB serial adapter, don’t connect the Vcc pin to the board, but if you’re using a serial adapter that’s connecting on the serial port or your computer or in a usb-to-serial converter connected to your computer, you can see strange characters in the terminal.
Out of the box, my Vera 3 only shows a constant green power light. I have left it powered on for hours with no change. I get no response from lan1 when I ping sweep 192.168.1.XXX or 192.168.81.XXX. Double tapping reset does nothing.
In order for the reset button to work, the OS has to be able to start and NetworkMonitor to be running, in your case if the power light from the startup is green I can assume that the OS doesn't even start to boot, like something in the kernel mtd can be corrupted or the rootfs mtd where the OS resides to be erased/corrupted.
Also, I noticed if the unit is powered on while holding the z-wave button, the USB 1 light flashes. Is it possible to download firmware and flash it via USB1?
If you keep the ZWave button pressed while you plug the power cable in your unit, this enters automatically in a download mode, from where you can re-write the firmware using the “Firmware Recovery tool” which is working only on Windows XP and with a special firmware file. If you have Windows XP please contact me by pm/mail in order to try this method. Since right now isn’t very test I don’t want to publish it largely.
I would like to try the usb Firmware Recovery Tool, but I am unable to send pm’s on this forum. I have turned on the ability to have other members email me if you want to proceed over email, send me one.
I switched to Putty and I am getting the same results. I do not connect the 3.3v or the ground. If I do this, all of the Vera3 lights turn on and stay on when I power up the unit. I’m only connecting RX and TX and I am using a 6 inch wire from the pins on the vera3 and the USB serial adapter. I’m wondering If this setup is causing issues. The data I do get looks the same every time I boot.
If you don’t connect the GND (ground) it’s perfectly normal to not see anything or just scrambled text, how do you expect this to work if you don’t have the zero-voltage reference level on your serial adapter?
You need to connect the wires like this :
Serial Adapter → Vera Unit
GND → GND
TX → RX
RX → TX
Sorry to perhaps ask the wrong question here CJ, but You’re telling us any version lower then 1.5.270… when I’m going to my firmware update screen it shows version 1.5.254 is the latest version ;D
CJ : I haven’t fixed all the issues and don’t have yet enough confirms that the patches fixed the issues in order to release a new firmware version. I hope this week to release a new beta and if everything is ok next week will publish a new firmware.
I can read the boot sequence. (I had connected RX-RX instead of RX-TX, in this configuration, if you connected the ground, all of the LED’s came on and stayed on. )
Here are the last few lines from the boot sequence…
3: System Boot system code via Flash.
Booting image at bc0f0000 …
Image Name: MIPS OpenWrt Linux-2.6.37.1
Created: 2011-10-26 15:01:23 UTC
Image Type: MIPS Linux Kernel Image (lzma compressed)
Data Size: 875710 Bytes = 855.2 kB
Load Address: 80000000
Entry Point: 80000000
… Verifying Checksum … Bad Data CRC
Everyone: This is from the constant green light issue not the blinking green and orange issue.
CJ : In this case it looks like the kernel mtd partition is corrupted. You have to rewrite the OS on the board using tftp or the Recovery tool. I’ll send you an email with the instructions.
Thank you cj. The Recovery Tool was easy to use, and I have had no issues since flashing the new firmware. I’ve added my first zwave device and everything is working swimmingly.
Speaking of powering the unit off, is there any problem with removing power altogether occasionally for a number of hours? Is programming lost or are there any other known or expected consequences?
It seems that the corruption is happening when the unit is unplugged from the battery pack.
How does the unit know it's being powered by battery and not by the ac adaptor? And why would that make any difference to what happens when the power is removed? Should be take the same precautions when removing the ac adaptor power?
Because of this we've added a
POWER OFF feature in the new firmware.
In which new firmware have you added the POWER OFF feature?
What happens in the case of tripping over the cord, or other unexpected power loss? Is there a possibility of file-system corruption in a) the old firmware or b) the new firmware, still?
How does the unit know it's being powered by battery and not by the ac adaptor?
I was thinking exactly the same… sounds like male bovine excrement if you ask me
I think its far more likely that maybe power from the battery is not optimal as there always many cases of issues with the V2 after people had included with the battery, and as such I’ve never trusted it!
It seems that the corruption is happening when the unit is unplugged from the battery pack.
How does the unit know it’s being powered by battery and not by the ac adaptor? And why would that make any difference to what happens when the power is removed? Should be take the same precautions when removing the ac adaptor power?[/quote]
The Vera3 unit doesn’t know when it’s on dc or ac power. I said that because all the customers which encountered the issue experience it in this way : they where adding devices using the battery pack and after disconnecting the battery pack and connecting the ac adapter the power led started to blink.
Yes, you should take the same precaution also when you unplug the unit from the AC adapter.
Because of this we've added a
POWER OFF feature in the new firmware.
In which new firmware have you added the POWER OFF feature?
Starting from 1.5.254 and also in order to Reset to factory defaults your Vera3 unit you have to keep pressed for 5 seconds on the Reset button, not double tap it as it was on Vera2.
What happens in the case of tripping over the cord, or other unexpected power loss? Is there a possibility of file-system corruption in a) the old firmware or b) the new firmware, still?
We've found and fixed certain issues related to nand driver, jfss2 and overlayfs in the new firmware and hope that any other new bugs won't appear, although this ones are very hard to reproduce :
ie : I've left for 2 days 3 Vera units (with old and new firmware) in save and cold restarts every 5 minutes and couldn't hit the bugs.
