Attention! Any changes you make will void your warranty for this device! The author is not responsible for any damage resulting from any actions of the user!
We will need:
- Computer with USB port
- Tester or voltmeter
- UART adapter 3,3V , like this
All steps will be shown on Linux OS, if your OS is different, please refer to specific UART setup instructions on your OS.
Operating procedure:
- Take a close look at the UART adapter. Find pins
GND,TX,RX. If your adapter supports the function of selecting the operating voltage, make sure that it is set to 3.3V! - Using a tester (voltmeter), make sure that your UART adapter outputs 3.3V. To do this, take measurements between the contacts
GNDandTX, as well asGNDandRX. Do not use the adapter if the voltage value is 5V! This will kill your camera! - Connect the UART adapter to your computer USB port. You need to find out the mount point of the adapter in your operating system.
- Use terminal. Run the
lsusbcommand and carefully examine the output. Find your UART adapter. - Use terminal. Run the command
dmesg | grep attachedfrom superuser. Compare the output of both commands and find the adapter mount point. For example, use the screenshot below:
- So, we got that our device is mounted at
/dev/ttyUSB0. In your case, the mount address may be different. We will use this address when connecting via UART. Be careful, when connecting several such devices, as well as when disconnecting incorrectly, the mount address may change.
Currently, the camera only supports flashing via UART adapter, so we need to disassemble the camera to perform the operations. Remember that this will void your manufacturer's warranty!
We will need:
- The device
- Hairdryer or another heater
- A flat, thin object, such as a utility knife
- Long thin x-type screwdriver
- Accuracy
So, let's go:
- Gently warm up the front of the camera (where the lens is)
- Using a utility knife or other pointed object, carefully pry off the front part. Remember, there are important wires under the front, don't damage them!
- Working in a circle, carefully separate the front part from the camera body. Remember that it is wired to the main board of the camera!
- Under the bottom you will find two screws that need to be removed. After that, carefully separate the halves of the camera body. Be careful not to hurt yourself or damage the connecting wires or parts of the camera!
- Unscrew a few more screws, freeing the main board of the device. Also free the type C port
Examine the camera carefully, find the necessary elements, because in the next steps we will have to physically interact with some of them. The manufacturer may change some components of the device without notifying consumers. For this reason, two cameras released at different times may have different hardware and different software. Therefore, once again carefully study the components, make sure that they correspond to those indicated in this manual. If you have any questions, please contact our Telegram channel
The most important part for us on it is the memory chip.
It has a numerical-alphabetic marking. Make sure the chip on your board has a similar marking! The number 128 means the number of bits of memory. 128/8=16, so our memory is 16 MB. You need to choose the firmware for this type of memory!
This is where the wireless module, CPU, and various other components are located. But the most important thing for us is the three contacts with a hole, located side by side in the upper right sector of the board. It is through them that we give control signals to the camera.
In our case, it has a numerical-alphabetic marking. Ingenic T31N. The letter N is a series. It is listed in the second row. More
In order to connect the UART adapter to the camera board, you need to use the wires with terminals. They can come with a UART adapter. However, they can be replaced with similar ones. Similar connection types are found in a variety of electronics. The second end of the wire to the board should be soldered so that the contact does not disappear at the right time. Be careful when soldering, do not damage the circuit elements and do not short the contacts together!
Connect the wires coming from the UART adapter to the board as shown in the figure. If you did everything right, the camera will show the log during the boot. Let's check it out.
First, we need to install a terminal program to send control commands from the camera and receive feedback. Linux has a fairly large number of terminals, you can choose the most convenient for you. Among them are screen, picocom, minicom, cutecom. The latter has a GUI.
Install the terminal program:
sudo apt install <NAME>
The commands will be given for the picocom program.
To get started, familiarize yourself with the program's capabilities and command syntax:
picocom --help
Connect the UART adapter and run the command in the terminal:
picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0
where the -b option specifies the baudrate, and /dev/ttyUSB0 is the mount point address we learned earlier.
If you did everything right, the program will write that the terminal is ready to work. Familiarize yourself with terminal control commands by pressing the key sequence Ctrl+A Ctrl+H. For a more detailed understanding of the terminal program, refer to the relevant manuals on the web.
If you power up the camera, you will see the boot log. Try pressing keys such as Enter and make sure that the terminal responds to them and sends events. If everything is done correctly, you can proceed to the next step.
Unfortunately, the MJSXJ03HL camera does not support boot interruption by sending a key combination. For this reason, boot interrupting and gaining access to the downloader console will be done by us manually. To do this, it will be necessary to close some contacts of the memory chip. For how to do this, read here. Carefully study the above manual, find the memory chip and the necessary contacts, prepare what you will close the contacts with. All manipulations will have to be done quickly enough. ATTENTION!!! You take full responsibility for your actions! The following is the sequence of actions to gain access to the bootloader console:
- Connect the camera to the UART adapter
- Connect the UART adapter to the computer's USB port.
- Launch the terminal on the computer, make sure it sees the UART adapter
- Get ready to close the contacts
- Apply power to the board
- The download log should appear in the terminal window
- Close the contacts of the memory chip (This must be done 0.5-1 sec after power is applied)
- The download should abort. Contacts can be opened.
- If you did everything correctly, the U-boot console will appear on the screen with a
>symbol and the ability to enter. - Type
helpto list the commands present in the bootloader
Unfortunately, the manufacturer for this camera greatly limited the capabilities of U-boot, this will create a series of obstacles for us in the future until we flash U-boot from OpenIPC. But first we need to save the stock firmware of the camera.
Attention! Do not let this point! The backup of the factory firmware will allow you to restore the performance of the device, if suddenly something goes wrong.
We will need:
- Camera disassembled with connected UART
- Computer
- SD card with a capacity of at least 16 MB It is first recommended to familiarize yourself with the original article
ATTENTION! During the following manipulations, all information from the SD card will be inaccessible, and the card itself cannot be used before formatting! All data, located on the map will be irrevocably lost!
The card must be inserted into the camera slot. The UART-adapter must be attached to the computer, and the terminal program is launched.
- Interrupt the loading of the camera by closing the contacts, we get into the bootloader console.
- If the SD card was inserted after the load interruption, perform
mmc rescan - First, we clean the required space for recording a dump of the original firmware there:
mmc dev 0
mmc erase 0x10 0x8000
- Now you need to copy the contents of the firmware from the flash memory chip into the RAM of the camera. To do this, clean the site of RAM, get access to the flash memory chip and copy the entire volume of flash memory into the purified space of RAM. Then save the copied data from RAM to the card. Insert the commands line-by-line!
mw.b 0x80600000 ff 0x1000000
sf probe 0
sf read 0x80600000 0x0 0x1000000
mmc write 0x80600000 0x10 0x8000
where 0x80600000 - Load address of Ingenic T31N.
Remove the card from the camera and insert into the computer with the Linux operating system. Using the dd command, copy the data from the card to the binary file on the computer disk.
dd bs=512 skip=16 count=32768 if=/dev/sdc of=./fulldump.bin
Attention! The mounting point of sdc may differ (sda, sdb), depending on the connected equipment of your computer .
ATTENTION! Some people have reported problems with the installation method described below! Until all issues are resolved and the repo is updated, please use the installation method from https://github.com/themactep/device-mjsxj03hl.
NOTE: !Lite version recommended! All the following manipulations are described for the Lite version
To obtain firmware and instructions, use Automatic generator Instruction for our processor Fill the required fields and indicate your MAC address. Like this:
Generate the firmware. Carefully study the page with firmware and instructions. Unfortunately, the manufacturer did not add a TFTP program to the factory bootloader, therefore we will flash our firmware in parts and manually. Go to the section Alternatively, flash OpenIPC Firmware by its parts and download the bootloader's binary file to the link. You should get a binary file u-boot-t31n-universal.bin. Do not close the page with the instructions. We will need it later.
Place the resulting file on your SD card. Attention! If you use the same memory card as in the last paragraph, format it in MBR (MS-DOS). Do not use GPT! If you use Windows OS, this is the most common formatting. Just connect the memory card and Windiows yourself will offer it to format it.
So, we have our camera connected to the UART, in the slot of which a memory card is inserted, formatted in Fat32 with a bootloader binary file on it. Just in case, let's do
mmc rescan
and additionally check that you did everything correctly
fatls mmc 0:1
Your memory card data should come out. If any errors come up, do not continue until they are fixed! Otherwise, flashing the camera will be possible only on special equipment.
At the beginning, we will enter the environment variables with the setenv command
setenv baseaddr 0x80600000
setenv flashsize 0x1000000
The factory bootloader does not support saving variables, so if the camera was rebooted, you will have to enter it again.
Now we proceed to the most crucial moment - U-Boot flashing. Insert commands line by line! Be careful that the commands do not return errors! Do not continue if something goes wrong, do not try to restart the camera, ask for help in our Telegram channel
mw.b ${baseaddr} 0xff 0x50000
sf probe 0
sf erase 0x0 0x50000
fatload mmc 0:1 ${baseaddr} u-boot-t31n-universal.bin
sf write ${baseaddr} 0x0 ${filesize}
If everything went well, then you now have a new bootloader from OpenIPC that supports all the necessary commands.
Command reset in the bootloader console, the camera will reboot. Camera loading can now be interrupted by pressing Ctrl+C
Now that we have a bootloader with the right set of commands, we can flash the rest of the firmware. Go back to the instruction page we received in Firmware generation Next in the section Flash OpenIPC Linux kernel and root filesystem. Download the archive from the link Download OpenIPC Firmware (Ultimate) bundle You will find 4 files in it: the root FS image and the kernel, as well as checksums for them. Unzip them to your memory card and place it in the camera slot.
Next:
- Connect the UART, launch the terminal
- We supply power to the camera and quickly stop the download by pressing
Ctrl+C. Get into the bootloader console - Checking access to the memory card
mmc rescan
- Enter environment variables and save them:
setenv baseaddr 0x80600000
setenv flashsize 0x1000000
saveenv
- Reassign ROM partitions according to the size and type of flash memory. Despite the fact that we have 16Mb of memory, using this layout in combination with the Lite version will allow us to get more free space.
run setnor8m
- Flash boot (Commands are entered line by line!)
mw.b 0x80600000 0xff 0x200000
fatload mmc 0:1 0x80600000 uImage.t31n
sf probe 0; sf lock 0;
sf erase 0x50000 0x200000; sf write 0x80600000 0x50000 ${filesize}
- Flash rootfs (Commands are entered line by line!)
mw.b 0x80600000 0xff 0x500000
fatload mmc 0:1 0x80600000 rootfs.squashfs.t31n
sf probe 0; sf lock 0;
sf erase 0x250000 0x500000; sf write 0x80600000 0x250000 ${filesize}
- We command
resetand the camera reboots with the new firmware.
If you did everything right, the following will appear in the terminal window:
Welcome to OpenIPC
openipc-t31 login:
Login as root , without password
In the resulting input field, command
firstboot
Congratulations on successfully installing OpenIPC!
ATTENTION! Use a separate SD card for basic settings or delete the contents of the autoconfig folder after this step!
We will need:
- Computer with card reader
- Micro SD card
- Camera
ATTENTION!!! After this procedure, all camera settings will be deleted! If this is unacceptable, or you do not have a microSD card - manually configure according to the outdated version of the manual
Download to your computer and extract the contents of the flash folder to a memory card.
The contents of the folder must be unpacked into the root directory, and the directory and file structure must be preserved!
Edit the wlan0 file located in the path ~/autoconfig/etc/network/interfaces.d - replace SSID and PASSWORD with the parameters of your access point.
Insert a memory card into the camera, turn on the power. The camera will automatically complete all the presets and reboot.
After these manipulations, the network should appear. You can log in to the web interface and continue setting up
ATTENTION! Don't forget to remove the memory card and delete the autoconfig folder or replace the memory card!
Now you can control the camera via SSH and Web interface. Carefully disconnect the wires from the board. Assemble the camera. Remember, the camera is easy to assemble, do not use force. Be careful not to damage your camera.
Success in use OpenIPC!