You are here

NanoStation Crash

3 posts / 0 new
Last post
WA3LAB
NanoStation Crash

I had a brand new Nanaostation M2 mounted on a 20 foot pole that fell over and of course the Nano managed to find the sidewalk.  The case is cracked so I took it apart to survey any other physical damage.  The PC board has no obvious damage, but the metal cover on the RF section had popped off.  I powered it up and it appears to boot up but now it is transmitting on channel 11 at 20 mhz bandwith where it had been at channel -2 and 5 MHZ bandwith.  Also the LAN ports appear to be dead.  I tried to set up for a TFTP reflash, but I can't get a ping on the LAN port.  So I did a few hours of research on the Forums and ended up with my Raspberry Pi connected to the internal serial port.  I can see the system booting, and appears possibly all that is wrong is the LAN port is dead.  Maybe the metal shield shorted something when it hit the sidewalk.

        I do not want to waste a lot of time on this effort, nor do I want someone to hold my hand through the entire process.  I look at this as a learning opportunity and I am simply looking for some information as to what I can do from the internal serial port.  I saw several references to "http://bloodhound.aredn.org/products/AREDN/wiki/HowTo/Unbrick"  which appears to be a dead link. Any help from here would be greatly appreciated. 

73,
Glenn WA3LAB

"Proud member of the MESHPotts"
 

AE6XE
AE6XE's picture
Glenn,  Since publishing the
Glenn,  Since publishing the AREDN instructions to recover from the serial port, several other groups picked up and also documented.   We can now defer back upstream to OpenWrt.  Scroll down to find the instructions:

https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/nanostationm2?s[]=urescue

Note, I have found some soft-bricked devices that would not reliably reboot after the first time, when following this proceedure.  If anyone comes across this situation, be sure to boot AirOS the first time, then do an upgrade of AirOS from the AirOS UI.  This will get the bootloader and everything back to normal.

Joe AE6XE
WA3LAB
it's working! ...for now

Joe,
      First of all, thanks for the information.  I tried the usual TFTP method, but still no connection on the MAIN LAN port when I tried to ping.  I tried the last procedure where you stop the boot up and type the urescue command.  I still could not get the TFTP to connect on the LAN port.  I then took the Nano to the bench and got out my heat gun.  I have done this on other damaged surface mount boards as a last resort.  I carefully heated around each chip, and then the entire board.  I then let it sit to cool off.  I plugged the terminal back into the serial port, and powered up the Nano.  I noted some new verbage on the terminal which I had not seen before, so I quickly changed the PC back to DHCP and I got an IP address of 192.168.1.5?  I opened the browser and typed in localnode, and I got the NOCALL screen.  Good news , it 's now working, bad news, I don't know what exactly fixed it.  Thanks again, and I'll let you know if I discover anything else.
73,
Glenn WA3LAB
 

Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer