#1 Flash memory corruption causes bootloop

Type: Critical

Problem:

Some teams have returned radios that were stuck in a bootloop. This means that while the radio is coming up, it reboots on its own.

Investigation

Upon further investigation, these units appear to have have part of their flash memory corrupted. The corrupted flash memory is factory burned and contains calibration and regulatory limits.

Here's an example:

Affected Units

It's possible that all units can be affected by this issue.

Anecdotally, it appears that this corruption can happen when upgrading from firmware versions prior to 1.2.0. At the moment we believe that radios from the first production run are affected. These would have been distributed at the 2024 FIRST Championship and some units sold during 2024. These units can be identified by having a S/N that starts with 2401:

Additionally, radios from the first production batch will have numbered DIP switches and won't have the AUX1/AUX2/AP labels:

Radios from the first production batch will not have AUX1 PoE / AUX2 PoE / 2.4 GHz AP labels.

AUX1 PoE / AUX2 PoE / 2.4 GHz AP labels mean your radio is NOT part of the first production batch.

Solution

A mitigation has been developed and introduced in firmware version 1.2.5. All teams should update their radios to v1.2.5 (or greater) ASAP to avoid potential issues.

What if your radio is affected?

If your radio is affected by this issue, it can be recovered using remote support. Unfortunately the only way to recover this requires restricted access to the device as the partition we’re accessing was explicitly called out as a protected region during the regulatory approvals.

Please contact WestCoast Products support and they'll coordinate remote support.

Here's an example of how remote support works: