I may have bricked my G1 Station. HELP!

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1

I have the Station Edition G1 device. I had it “working” via the Android app, but couldn’t be sure because it was seeing NO other nodes on the map at all. I even set my amateur radio callsign into it and emptied the PSK field to remove encryption, but it didn’t do anything new.

While playing around with it, I got the web client running and connected via serial, and accidentally hit save on a configuration for “Repeater”. It ran for an interminable time, with “Rebooting” on the device screen. After a long time, I unplugged it, thinking it was just stuck.

The screen did not come on when I reconnected the power. Nothing would connect to it. Not even the firmware flasher. So I connected via ExtraPuTTY, and it is sending random garbage on the serial connection.

Here’s a short excerpt from the top of the putty.log file:
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~= PuTTY log 2023.07.04 16:43:28 =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=
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So…have I wrecked this device, or is there some Vulcan Mind Meld or Secret Handshake I can give it to get it to a usable state again? It came with firmware 2.1.9, so I didn’t originally flash it when I was setting it up, and the web flasher only has up to 2.1.7 something. CAN it be reflashed? Can it be tricked back into usefulness by jumpering a couple of pins to force it into bootloader state? Or should I just start the process of getting a new one?

Oh, and is the fact that I saw NO OTHER NODES in the area significant? Is that because I set it up with my own channel and I’d see no one else until they scanned my code or something? I don’t even know if anyone in the area even HAS Meshtastic. So did I just totally get boned from the word go here? I followed the Getting Started instructions.

2

Thanks to Starsquatter on the Discord, I got it fixed. I didn’t know that setting it to Repeater doesn’t bring up the display, so it was working in repeater mode. I couldn’t reset it to Client mode, though…don’t know why, but it wouldn’t save. So I got Python and Git, and went through the Python flash instructions.

Only weirdness was that the flash batch file for the firmware wouldn’t stop after it successfully installed the firmware. It kept reinstalling over and over until I clobbered the batch after it succeeded. Then I could finally pair it with the Android app, and all seems to be working.

I don’t appear to have any other nodes within receiving range that are currently operating, so I’m going to get another device for my partner and set it up on her phone so we have back channel comms.

This looks like a nifty system. I’m going to have to bring it up with my ham club, especially the mesh radio guys. (AREDN)

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