hub dead, no lights, no reaction, is there still a chance?

[ertanden]

Hi, just saw this repo and wanted to ask here since you guys seem to know how this hub works.

My son has a Mindstorms 51515 Robot Inventor Hub (same as Spike hub I guess?) and a few days ago he told me when he was updating the firmware from the official Mindstorms Inventor app it was suddenly interrupted and there was an error.

After that the hub was not able to boot. I tried with USB and the power light came up and I could use pybricks (https://dfu.pybricks.com/) to flash the original 51515 firmware. The page displayed hub is "Rebooting" and after that absolute dead hub.

No matter what sequence of recovery buttons I press, or how long I press, or if I connect the USB cable, remove the battery, insert back the battery, charge for a few hours... I tried all the troubleshooting.

There's no light at all. No signs of life.

Did anybody here had the same experience? Do you see a chance of recovery? Any particular thing I should try?

Thanks! Appreciate all the work!

[dlech]

If you remove the battery, replace the battery, press and hold the Bluetooth button and the connect the USB cable to the hub and to a computer while still holding the Bluetooth button, does the Bluetooth light start to change colors?

Just like in this video: pybricks/support#728 (comment)

[ertanden]

@dlech thanks! Actually seems like I can still perform the DFU flash using the BT button and USB cable. So there's still some life in the hub.

However, I tried several times and actually multiple firmware versions from this repo, and the hub goes dead after the flash of a backup firmware. It looks like it doesn't even boot. No lights etc (replaced the battery etc...) and it can't connect to Mindsphere app using USB.

However, the strange thing is I tried to install the PyBricks Beta firmware (https://beta.pybricks.com/) and the hub seems to work fine with that! I even tried a small program to control some motors or read sensors etc. It just works with PyBricks firmware, but no luck with official firmware.

Any guess on this?

[dlech]

This could be because the file was not for the same hub or corrupted or something like that. We are working on integrating the firmware restore into the Pybricks Code app so it is as easy as flashing the Pybricks firmware. But it will be a week or two before that is ready. You could also try https://spike.legoeducation.com/hubdowngrade/.

[ertanden]

I tried nearly all the firmware versions (both for spike and storm) from this repo multiple times. Also trying flashing using the great pybricksdev CLI tool. But didn't make a difference. So in the end I guess this can't be resolved by just restoring the firmware.

There was a little hope, because some of the restored firmware versions caused the hub to be recognized on USB (Spike Prime app seemed to offer an update, but it immediately failed at %0).

Also tried rshell but this can't connect;

Connecting to /dev/ttyACM0 (buffer-size 512)...
Trying to connect to REPL 

I feel like the filesystem may be corrupt. And have no idea how to fix it.

[dlech]

You could contact LEGO customer support and see what they say about the failed update.

[SpudGunMan]

try a different Pc with new lego OEM software.

did it get black listed by accident in a ignore file or usb serial etc..

[ertanden]

I finally managed to fix the hub! Thanks @dlech for your support. Pybricks has so much potential and all the tooling around it is amazing. Also thanks @gpdaniels for this repo, these backup images helped me a lot for this recovery.

Let me document in detail what happened, so if anybody goes through similar issues, maybe it helps.

As I have written before, no matter how many times I flashed original backup firmware images using DFU, the hub was never booting up and never able to connect to Spike or Robot Inventor apps. Also rshell wasn't connecting...

However, at some point I tried the following sequence (after flashing firmware spike - v1.3.00.0000-e8c274a from this repo);

1. unplug USB cable
2. remove the battery
3. put battery back
4. press and hold the Left button (is this a known/documented sequence at all? I think I saw it mentioned somewhere when researching this issues, however I'm not sure...)
5. then connect the USB cable attached to the PC
6. Immediately I saw rhshell responded, and I knew something was different for good

After that Spike app and Robot Inventor app started recognizing the hub. To be honest, I tried the firmware spike - v1.3.00.0000-e8c274a before, but since I never tried the above sequence with the "Left button" I was never able to connect from any app.

So after this stage, I performed the update provided by Spike app and the hub was then able to properly boot and connect to Spike Hub. But, I tried to run a small program and it complained "No Space Left on Hub"!

Then I tried, to reset the hub from Spike. After reset, the hub asked once again for an update, however as a result nothing changed. Still had "No space left on hub".

Finally, I switched to Robot Inventor app (first flashed the firmware image recommended in https://dfu.pybricks.com/), then connected with Robot Inventor app (this time I didn't need the "Left" button sequence). Performed the provided update from Robot Inventor app. But once again, when I tried to run a simple program: "No Space Left on Hub"!!!

Final thing that solved it for good. Perform Hub reset from Robot Inventor app. It performed the reset, asked for an update and voila! Now the hub seems to be back to normal and able to run programs from Robot Inventor app.

The hub is originally a Robot Inventor hub, so I guess the reset from Robot Inventor app could properly cleanup the storage, but Spike was not able to...

Anyways, that's it. 😌

[laurensvalk]

I found the following in my notes (it has been a while), but it would be good if someone wants to confirm:

• Hold left during boot: Do not mount file system, so skip executing boot.py and main.py.
• Hold right during boot: Mount file system, run boot.py but skip main.py.
• Hold left + right: Mount, but then reset the file system, creating a new boot.py and main.py.

I don't know if left+right will work if the file system is already corrupted. If it's the same as the Pyboard reset then it should probably work.

And if not, you should still be able to hold only left, and then use the REPL to reset the filesystem instead.

[ertanden]

Thanks @laurensvalk. This is extremely useful information and it makes sense that it worked for me with these sequences. So I can confirm somehow the "hold left during boot" sequence was the one that helped my case with a corrupt file system. The other ones though I can't try now, because my son wouldn't allow me... :D

[Ic33s]

Hi, have the same problem. => Half dead 51515 hub. 2 days ago I had a look at the referenced https://dfu.pybricks.com/ page and checked it out and set some bookmarks. Today I wanted to give it a shot, but: Unfortunatly today the information how to do the firmware update manually on windows/linux seems to be gone. There must happened some website update because some of my bookmark links to subpages are no longer working. Has someone saved the informations on how to do it on windows or linux? Thanks a lot.

[dlech]

Did you try the firmware restore on https://code.pybricks.com? Or are you looking for a command line tool?

[Ic33s]

Thanks for the quick reply. Finally I figured out by accident how to use the firmware restore. Completely my fault: I already had the hub booted up to DFU mode, because I still had the previous manual solution in mind and then there was no hub in the connection popup. Thank you very much. My son is very, very happy :)