I have tried every troubleshooting step and my device will not stop flashing red/green
I downloaded the latest firmware 2886 with no luck.
I also looked up my ip address in my router and it does ping.
My address is 192.168.3, yet when I put that in my browser, the web portal does not open, it just brings me to a page that says the following:
Select file to update firmware Choose File Press Update to Start Process Update
WARNING
Please DO NOT disconnect the power from the device during the update process!
The process will take approximately 30 seconds to complete.
I also tried the following:
Alternating Red/Green A unit with red/green alternate flashing means that there was a power loss in the midst of a firmware update of the OBi. It is possible to recover the OBi. Try power cycling the OBi, first. If the light is still alternating, you will need to reinstall your firmware.
Click here for further recovery instructions
Please help, thanks in advance
I also tried a factory reset but the OBI will not reset after inserting pin in back of unit
Quote from: Bluesters on August 20, 2016, 11:40:08 AM
I also tried a factory reset but the OBI will not reset after inserting pin in back of unit
And you are following these instructions to the letter?
QuoteReset the OBi Device Using the Physical Pin (Button)
1. With a paper clip (or similar) depress the reset pin located at the bottom of the OBi.
2. While keeping the reset pin depressed, plug-in the power cord.
First, the Power LED will turn red, then become sold green.
Keep depressing the reset pin while this is occurring.
3. After 10 seconds, the Power LED will start to flash green (slowly).
You may now release the reset pin.
4. Within 5 seconds, the Power LED will start to flash green rapidly for about 3 seconds.
5. Next the Power LED will change to red briefly indicating the OBi is now rebooting.
Quote from: Bluesters on August 20, 2016, 11:34:19 AM
My address is 192.168.3, yet when I put that in my browser, the web portal does not open, it just brings me to a page that says the following:
Select file to update firmware Choose File Press Update to Start Process Update
WARNING
Please DO NOT disconnect the power from the device during the update process!
The process will take approximately 30 seconds to complete.
Does that process go to completion without error?
The answer to both questions above is yes.
Followed the reset instructions to the letter
and yes, the page that shows only the firmware update page allows me to update the OBI, it does update but then just goes back to flashing red/green
Fortunately, I've never experienced that situation and don't know how rigorously the OBi checks the offered firmware file before flashing it. Check that the 2886.fw firmware file is exactly 2,243,822 bytes. If not, try downloading again and updating.
Yes exactly 2.13 MB (2,243,822 bytes)
Given that you have followed the instructions, and you are still seeing that symptom, your OBi is defective (probably failing flash memory). It's time to buy a new one. The 100 series are now discontinued, so buy a 200 instead.
Okay. if I purchase another.
How do I delete the current soft phone that still shows on my account?
Thanks
Quote from: Bluesters on August 21, 2016, 06:03:31 AM
Okay. if I purchase another.
How do I delete the current soft phone that still shows on my account?
Thanks
You don't (and can't). It comes with the Obitalk portal account. Delete the 100 from your account and use the **5 xxxx procedure to add the replacement.
Use of the softphone number is optional. If you don't use it, it is harmless and can be totally ignored.
Thanks
Quote from: Bluesters on August 21, 2016, 06:03:31 AM
Okay. if I purchase another.
I would not discard your OBi just yet. I would unhook all wiring/power from the unit and sit it on a shelf for a few days. I've heard too many stories of supposedly dead/bricked OBi devices mysteriously come back to life after a few days of no use. Capacitor discharge issue? Beats me.
I think drgeoff is much more the electronics expert than I am. Perhaps he can posit a theory.
Yes, I will keep it.
I'll let you know the results after the unit sits idle for about a week.
If after a week it doesn't work, maybe try leaving it on the shelf for a month.
Really? That's the advice?! If it does somehow work again, it is obvious that the device will face similar issues. The shelf delay does nothing to resolve the issue in the long run.
Even if the file is the right size, check that the MD5 hash matches. May be the file is corrupted but the size stayed the same.
When I calculated its MD5 using Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier, I got 9f5e945f44c6861cca01d8b1c6f05505.
The Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier is at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11533 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11533) and I used the following command to calculate it: fciv.exe OBi-latest.fw
Quote from: LTN1 on August 22, 2016, 02:32:26 PM
If after a week it doesn't work, maybe try leaving it on the shelf for a month.
Really? That's the advice?! If it does somehow work again, it is obvious that the device will face similar issues. The shelf delay does nothing to resolve the issue in the long run.
+1
With any luck, Obihai will have a sale on the 200s for Labor Day weekend.
Update:
I did purchase an OBI 200, still waiting for it to arrive.
After having the Obi 100 on the shelf for about a week unplugged (Capacitor discharge issue?), I tried to hook it back up again last night.
When first powering on, the lights did stay green and not flashing red/green and i thought hey this might work again. When entering the 192.168.1.8, I was able to finally get into the Obi portal, I went to system management and then firmware update, (by the way I was able to reset the obi to factory default with the pin, something it wouldn't allow me last week), I updated the firmware successfully, at least that is what the portal stated), then proceeded with the echo test, that also worked?
The next step was to add the device, it stated to call **5 5847, as soon as I dialed I received no response on the phone and he OBI went back to flashing red/green.
(I also cannot reset the the OBI with the pin once again)
In summary, keeping the OBI on the shelf obviously affected it but the end result was still the same.
Waiting on my OBI 200 to arrive
Thanks to all who have responded and tried to help.
Quote from: Bluesters on August 29, 2016, 06:27:13 AM
In summary, keeping the OBI on the shelf obviously affected it but the end result was still the same.
Waiting on my OBI 200 to arrive
Thanks for reporting back. It was worth a shot. I had the same experience with an OBi110 but after a couple weeks I tried again and this time it worked and it's been running fine ever since. And that was over 2 years ago.
The OBi200 is a newer/superior device which I'm sure you'll be happy with.
Well, Well, Well!!!
My Obi 200 arrived today and I don't need it.
My OBi 100 is back to working again. Here is what I did.
Before I opened the package of the new OBI 200 that just arrived, I tried the OBI 100 just one more time.
1. After being unplugged for about another week, before I plugged it in, I had the pin depressed to reset before powering on. The OBI successfully reset to factory default.
2. With lights staying green, instead of updating firmware directly from first version to latest (2886). I updated the firmware to the version before the latest.
3. Added device on OBITALk.com, there was a message right before that device needed to be updated to latest version 2886. Clicked on that, first attempt unsuccessful, second attempt succeeded.
4 Added device , it configured and connected.
I'm back up and running!!!
If it fails again I will be back to update on this page, the key may have been to upgrade firmware from first version to middle version, then let the portal advise me to update to latest version instead of me doing it manually.
Given how many times the device went into failure mode (red/green blinking), I'm pretty confident that its flash memory module is dying (read and/or write errors). If you want to continue this science experiment, great. But, if you want reliable phone service, then it's Hammer Time for the 100.
Quote from: Bluesters on September 02, 2016, 03:40:56 PM
I'm back up and running!!!
That is what I suspected would happen. You should be good to go now. The problem was corrupted firmware which you have now fixed. You may or may not also have a hardware issue. My OBi110 which had the same issue has been working fine for over 2 years and has been providing very reliable phone service.
I've seen it happen many times:
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=11532.msg76156#msg76156 (http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=11532.msg76156#msg76156)
Quote from: SteveInWA on September 02, 2016, 04:08:48 PM
But, if you want reliable phone service, then it's Hammer Time for the 100.
Did you say Hammer time? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo
The notion that placing the device on the shelf for a week does some magical thing to it is junk science, unless your shelf happens to be in the beam path of an X-ray, gamma ray, or other ionizing radiation source that is causing physical changes to the integrated circuits inside the device.
The OBi 1x0 devices consist of the following subsystems, which communicate with each other via an industry-standard SPI (serial) interface:
- The custom System On a Chip (SOC), which contains the CPU and several I/O bus interfaces, which communicate with
- An Etron SPI CMOS synchronous DRAM module/memory controller
- A Winbond SPI serial flash memory module/controller, which has its own, internal DC-DC voltage regulator to power flash memory write operations, etc.
- A Silicon Labs ProSLIC FXS module, which also has its own, internal power supply to support ring, off-hook and on-hook voltage generation
- The 110 also has a Silicon Labs FXO module, to support the POTS interface
The input from the external power supply (wall wart) is connected to a typical integrated circuit-based DC-DC regulated step-down power supply subsystem, to produce the 3.3VDC power used by the chips listed above. Yes, there are a few electrolytic capacitors on the board. These serve as a filter cap for the main power supply, and some small smoothing caps for the other chips. No, these capacitors don't hold a charge for weeks; they are quickly drained by the attached components when source power is removed, and no, unlike a PC, there is no large, main power supply creating the multiple different voltages used by the flash and SLIC subsystems.
There was a well-documented "capacitor rot" issue during the 1990s, which was caused by a improperly-formulated, stolen electrolyte recipe used by some unscrupulous manufacturers. Proprietary additives in the water-based electrolyte were omitted, resulting in corrosion. That problem impacted millions of manufactured circuit boards, such as PC motherboards, resulting in product failures and recalls. At the time, I managed a huge PC repair contract, for tens of thousands of Dell and other PCs, which contained the bad caps, which resulted in thousands of motherboard replacements. That problem was eliminated after the counterfeit electrolyte was discovered, and this was years before any OBi devices were manufactured. In that mess, it wasn't Dell's fault; it was their motherboard vendor's purchase of the bad caps.
In general, however, all electrolytic capacitors have a limited, finite lifespan, and they may degrade after 5-10 years of use, depending on operating environment and materials used. It's to be expected that all electronic products, from all manufacturers, containing electrolytic caps, will eventually experience errors. It's one reason you now see PC motherboard manufacturers advertising the high quality of their
solid (not electrolytic) capacitors.
If you bought an OBi 110 years ago, and it's now 2016, it's conceivable that its electrolytic caps could be degraded, but there will be no visible damage as there was to the defective caps of the 1990s, and the cap would need to be electrically-tested to determine if it was bad -- not something worth doing on a low-cost CE device.
Flash memory devices also have finite lifespans. Modern SSDs, for example, have built-in firmware to manage read and write errors, and to identify and flag bad cells, and use overprovisioned (spare) cells instead. The much-less-sophisticated SPI flash module in the OBi products isn't as robust in its ability to be "self-healing".
It's possible that a device could experience one or more flash memory write errors, and then, eventually, be able to recover and write successfully. Eventually, that module will fail again, just like a SSD that starts being flagged by SMART will eventually die.
The fact that a device "has been operating for X years since the failure" doesn't mean anything, since the flash memory module is not continuously writing its entire capacity, over and over in that period. Writes only occur when you do a firmware update (many writes to many blocks of cells), or update the device's settings (a few writes to some blocks of cells), or the OBi logs to its call history file (a few writes at a time).
Bottom line: yes, a corrupted firmware image would cause the green/red behavior, and yes, it may be possible to recover from it, but a device that repeatedly fails with firmware image X, and then magically works with a rewrite of that same, exact image a week later, will likely fail again at some future date, due to degraded hardware components. It's up to you, the user, to decide if you'd rather wait for a hard-failure, or to preemptively replace the product.
It would be nice if Obihai published MD5 values for its firmware images, but the average Joe User is barely able to figure out how to perform a manual update, let alone be tech-oriented enough to validate the file's MD5.
Quote from: SteveInWA on September 02, 2016, 07:10:23 PM
It's up to you, the user, to decide if you'd rather wait for a hard-failure, or to preemptively replace the product.
On this we totally agree.