Thanks Jason. I will keep trying Fast Power Cycle Device Recovery, but am not optimistic.
Athom Tech, would you provide serial flash pinout to the bulb? It looks like the connectors are there and accessible once just the bulb cover is removed.
Fast Power Cycle Recovery never worked, so I had to disassemble the bulb (hot air gun a necessity to soften the glue, especially between the housing and LEDs' metal platform).
Luckily, the GND, VCC, TX, RX, REST, GPIO0 are mostly well marked and very accessible once the AJW-05_8285 board in the bulb was desoldered detached for access. Here is what had to be done:
Also, thank you @athom for the pinout info on the AJW-05_8285 board in this thread:
OTA flashed with tasmota-minimal, then my own custom tasmota.bin.gz. This bricked the bulb (due to Athom's use of memory that's different from Tasmota's use). No recovery steps worked, had to access serial ports via points on AJW-05_8285 board board after desoldering it from bulb, then flash erase then program with my custom tasmota.bin. Resolder and reassemble to get working bulb on custom Tasmota build.
To avoid this bricking (and subsequent serial flashing work), don't OTA flash from Athom firmware to tasmota-minimal. Go straight to released pre-build tasmota.bin, console "reset 5", then OTA flash custom Tasmota as needed.
I am in cotact with Peter (Athom CEO). Good news. Athom will change to a full compatible Tasmota build. So soon no danger to brick a device when updating.
Athom reacted fast to the feedback of the Tasmota community! :-)
Tried "Fast Power Cycle Device Recovery" at: https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Device-Recovery/
This did not work. Will be trying serial reflash next...
Any hint as to how to serial flash this device?
Looks like the GPIO pins are exposed. Would you have the pinouts? Need GND, VCC, TX, RX at minimum, and GPIOs would be wonderful!
Thanks!
The reason for this is the 2M build linker script (not supported) used.
Original Tasmota is built with 1M no SPIFFS. Using a different variant will
result in a brick when using orig. Tasmota version for upgrade.
It will be just luck when device recovers with Fast Power Cycle Device Recovery procedure
To say it crystal clear, the issue is generated from the Athom firmware variant.
I am one of the admins of Tasmota Discord and a contributer of Tasmota
Official Athom can contact me on Discord.
Sincerly Jason2866
https://discord.gg/Ks2Kzd4
Thanks Jason. I will keep trying Fast Power Cycle Device Recovery, but am not optimistic.
Athom Tech, would you provide serial flash pinout to the bulb? It looks like the connectors are there and accessible once just the bulb cover is removed.
Fast Power Cycle Recovery never worked, so I had to disassemble the bulb (hot air gun a necessity to soften the glue, especially between the housing and LEDs' metal platform).
Luckily, the GND, VCC, TX, RX, REST, GPIO0 are mostly well marked and very accessible once the AJW-05_8285 board in the bulb was desoldered detached for access. Here is what had to be done:
Also, thank you @athom for the pinout info on the AJW-05_8285 board in this thread:
https://www.athom.tech/forum/light/how-to-recover-from-correct-ssid-but-wrong-wifi-password-on-initial-setup-of-athom-rgbw-bulb
Recap:
OTA flashed with tasmota-minimal, then my own custom tasmota.bin.gz. This bricked the bulb (due to Athom's use of memory that's different from Tasmota's use). No recovery steps worked, had to access serial ports via points on AJW-05_8285 board board after desoldering it from bulb, then flash erase then program with my custom tasmota.bin. Resolder and reassemble to get working bulb on custom Tasmota build.
To avoid this bricking (and subsequent serial flashing work), don't OTA flash from Athom firmware to tasmota-minimal. Go straight to released pre-build tasmota.bin, console "reset 5", then OTA flash custom Tasmota as needed.
I am in cotact with Peter (Athom CEO). Good news. Athom will change to a full compatible Tasmota build. So soon no danger to brick a device when updating.
Athom reacted fast to the feedback of the Tasmota community! :-)
Jason2866
Thank you Johann and Peter . This is the best way - WIN/WIN :-)