(ssc325) Full Flash Erased Automatically on First Boot

[noir017]

The camera seemed to boot normally after the initial firmware flashing. However, the entire flash memory was subsequently erased. The device showed no response on the second boot. When I removed the flash chip and inspected it, all data was found to be in the erased state (0xFF).

Logs:

openipc.log

Environment Details

• SoC: SSC325
• Flash Chip: XM25QH64A
• Firmware URL: https://openipc.org/cameras/vendors/sigmastar/socs/ssc325?mac=86-42-c8-4f-0a-01&cip=192.168.1.10&sip=192.168.1.254&net=both&rom=nor8m&var=lite&sd=sd

I’m not sure if I made any mistakes during the process. The same issue occurred when I reflashed the firmware for a second time.

[flyrouter]

Good afternoon, thank you for your interest in our project.

I tested the file downloaded from our website and I do not see any issues with it.
At the moment, firmware dumps are generated both on the website and in the OpenIPC/Firmware repository on GitHub.
You can also download the image from there and check it.
There is also a slight chance that your flash chip is faulty, locked, or exhibits some unusual behaviour due to a power system failure.

https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/releases/tag/image

[noir017]

Good afternoon, thank you for your interest in our project.

I tested the file downloaded from our website and I do not see any issues with it. At the moment, firmware dumps are generated both on the website and in the OpenIPC/Firmware repository on GitHub. You can also download the image from there and check it. There is also a slight chance that your flash chip is faulty, locked, or exhibits some unusual behaviour due to a power system failure.

https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/releases/tag/image

I tried replacing the flash chip and using the image from the releases page, but the exact same issue still occurred. I’m not sure if this is a hardware problem, though the device works perfectly fine when flashed with the stock firmware.
I no longer intend to attempt any further tests on this unit, as the motherboard is already damaged. If another attempt fails, removing the flash chip again could cause irreversible damage to the device.

That said, I have another device of the same model on hand, which is equipped with an SSC327 SoC instead.
It seems the SSC325 and SSC327 are closely related variants. I’d like to ask if it’s feasible for someone with limited hardware knowledge to port the firmware for the SSC327?

If you think this is doable, I’ll give it a try; if not, I’ll abandon this effort, and this issue can be closed as well.
Thank you.

[noir017]

Good afternoon, thank you for your interest in our project.

I tested the file downloaded from our website and I do not see any issues with it. At the moment, firmware dumps are generated both on the website and in the OpenIPC/Firmware repository on GitHub. You can also download the image from there and check it. There is also a slight chance that your flash chip is faulty, locked, or exhibits some unusual behaviour due to a power system failure.

https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/releases/tag/image

I got the SSC325 firmware running on the SSC327 successfully and found the root cause of the issue.
It was due to an incorrect flash memory size configuration — my flash is 8MB, but the firmware misrecognized it as 16MB.
In the end, I modified the following line in U-Boot:
Original:
mtdparts=NOR_FLASH:256k(boot),64k(env),2048k(kernel),${rootmtd}(rootfs),-(rootfs_data)
Modified to:
mtdparts=NOR_FLASH:256k(boot),64k(env),2048k(kernel),5120k(rootfs),704k(rootfs_data)
After this change, the system booted up successfully.