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As my second post on this forum, to keep the Long story short I got a HC300 (together with a remote and 4 zone amplifier) from a friend for free who sold his house. Before deciding if I want to invest more on new equipment to have an automation system for my house, I was fiddling with HC300 to see if I can get it to work with the amplifier for audio.

 

The first thing I tried was to upgrade the firmware from 2.0.4.92890 to 2.5.3 by using the USB restore application, admittedly a mistake. The controller was able to boot to Navigator screen before my failed upgrade, and I was able to see it from System Manager (I wasn't able to connect to it without a licensed Comproser Pro though). I followed below steps in performing the upgrade:

 

1) created the USB restore stick with version 2.5.3 firmware;

2) Powered off the controller and plug in the USB stick;

3) Powered on the controller with the USB stick plugged in

4) Controller identified the USB restore stick and kicked off the restore process

5) After "some" long waiting and stuck message showing no process on the screen I unplugged the USB stick and recycled power, this is probably where I made the mistake

6) Controller is able to reboot, showing various "services" being started, then IP address assigned together with the MAC address, and a bouncing progress bar at the bottom of the text messages on screen

7) The bouncing progress bar stopped after a few minutes and everything get frozen there, with no Control4 logo/Navigator, and I can neither see the controller from System Manager anymore. However I can ping it, and login with ssh root account, but sysman returned error instead of a list of running C4 processes, as shown in the attached screenshots. 

 

Does this mean the upgrade has failed? I was expecting to be able to identify it in System Manager after the upgrade just like before. If that's the case, is there any way to re-restore the factory default firmware? The problem with USB restore is that the controller is no longer able to see/boot from the USB restore stick during the initial power up process. I came across a tech support white paper describing how factory restore can be initiated from SSH for some other devices, could it be done in a similar way for HC300 controller or it's officially bricked/became a paper weight?

 

http://www.control4.com/files/dealers/Tech_Paper-Control4RecoveryDocumentation.pdf

 

Your inputs will be much appreciated.

 

 

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I don't think it is bricked, I have never seen it get bricked, I have seen a restore and updates take extremely long - 45 minutes to an hours sometimes. The fact you have a UI I think you got potential.

 

First question, what version HC-300 is this? The HC-300c does not use a restore stick, there is a little button in a hole on the back you have to press with a paperclip while you reboot it.  If you can see the UI on a TV it is much easier to know when to release.

 

If it is an early version of the HC-300 than the Restore stick should work, and the TV should indicate it is updating.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't think it is bricked, I have never seen it get bricked, I have seen a restore and updates take extremely long - 45 minutes to an hours sometimes. The fact you have a UI I think you got potential.

 

First question, what version HC-300 is this? The HC-300c does not use a restore stick, there is a little button in a hole on the back you have to press with a paperclip while you reboot it.  If you can see the UI on a TV it is much easier to know when to release.

 

If it is an early version of the HC-300 than the Restore stick should work, and the TV should indicate it is updating.

 

Thank you very much for your reply C4Programmer. To answer your question, it's the earlier version without the reset button. The unit still boots after the restore as shown in the screenshots, however there is only one Control4 service running in the background that I can see. I did try to do another restore, but the unit won't recognize the USB restore stick anymore.

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