RAK5005-0 - Can't connect via serial and doesn't show up via BLE

Support
1

I have some “older” (2ish years) RAK5005-0 meshtastic starter kits and some of them work great, and some of them don’t work at all.

I have a few that don’t appear in Bluetooth and I can’t connect to via Serial. I hit the reset button twice and they will show up as RAK4631 in Finder (I am on OSX), and I can “connect” to them via the Meshtastic web interface but I am unable to view or change any settings (is just labeled UNK).

Additionally, I am not able to copy the firmware files manually: “The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “firmware-rak4631-2.2.16.1c6acfd.uf2” can’t be read or written.
(Error code -36)”

I assume the issues are related. Any ideas?

Any ideas how to reset these devices and get meshtastic reinstalled?

2

I have a similar problem. I got the RAK Wireless Meshtastic starter kit with BLE antenna and LoRa antenna. The bluetooth showed up just fine on my phone and I was able to pair with it and it shows up in the Meshtastic Android app. When trying to connect to the device with BLE, the app complained that the firmware version was too old and needed to be updated.

So I tried to connect with it using serial since it was already plugged into the laptop and I could not find it on flasher dot meshtastic (i have flashed numerous devices including T-Echo [nRF52840 based] and its always at the top of the list of “tty…” drop down on the browser with an obvious name).

After many false starts, I finally reboot the laptop and “Bingo” I got the “RAK4631” drive to show up int he file manager! I pasted the new firmware from Meshtastic v2.2.23 and rebooted and NOW the device name would show up in client dot meshtastic “tty…” drop down and so I selected that bugger and … “UNK”.

So I am unable to change LoRa to “US” or any of that stuff. nRF52840 does NOT have WiFi so that is hopeless too. I do not know what to do at this point…

Opera browser
Linux Manjaro
Dell Laptop

3

OK!! I just connected via bluetooth!!!
I managed to connect to the device with the old firmware and now that it has the new firmware, I had to tell the phone to unpair from it and then pair to it again and, praise Yah, I guessed the correct PIN, 123456 !!
AND I got it set to “US” now and I should be off to the races!