Recovering The Things Gateway after erasing full serial flash

Unfortunately we have gone through all those steps indicated for RESET. Now is there any option to connect and get back to the previous functioning mode.

I don’t think you can go back to a previous working state
It could be software, it could be hardware… like a modern TV

Start with checking the powersource… the adapter

We tried with the Multitech power adapter, but it remains same, nothing changed.

Only the Blue dot light on the board is on and remaining LED’s for Indications are off.

How to recover the gateway after erasing the full serial flash. we did reset by holding the button while powering on the gateway.

ah ok that explained a lot.

so you don’t have a bootloader on board , you need to flash the gateway firmware.
todo that you need

Thank you BoRROZ.

I will try them and update.

I updated the title of this topic to be more clear about the fact that this happened after a serial flash erasure

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I had this too. Well at least it is not looping around the reset. Don’t panic it does not mean that you have ‘bricked’ your device. This will burst back into life when you upload the next version of code.

Are you sure? I erased the serial flash quite a few times and that certainly did not erase the bootloader. Also, from another topic:

Of course, this does not mention pressing the Mode button while booting, but also does not mention the need for a PICkit in case of failure.

If holding down the mode button can indeed erase the bootloader then I feel the instructions should be removed from TTN Gateway - FAQ altogether.


I even think it did not erase the factory firmware, according to my January 18th and January 25th posts, where I only got updated firmware on February 6th, so would not have had an SD card inserted to re-flash the firmware in January, I think.

So he should try first an SD card ?

Yes, I’d first just try an SD card.

(I’m even confused why, at least with the factory firmware, I really think it did not erase the firmware for me either, but well.)

I had the same as textra a while back… only one LED on… after flashing the bootloader again it came to life… and after a power cycle (ethernet cable) it loaded new firmware itself.

so did or did not pressing the little button in the gateway during power up erased the bootloader… that’s the question … then ?

No it is not. The boot loader is located in protected memory and it will not be erased/overwritten by pressing the button.

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can the bootloader be damaged in some way then ?

The only way the bootloader can be changed is with a programmer like the pickit. It should always be possible to reinstall the firmware using an SD card.

I’m not sure why some gateways are unable to boot after erasing the serial flash. The serial flash does store the OTA firmware updates downloaded from our update server, so my suspicion is that the gateway thinks that all those zeros in the serial flash (after erasure) are the newly downloaded firmware and tries to run it. I’ll forward this to the gateway team. Maybe they can explain what happens.

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I will try with SD card then. If it boots I will update. Share me the link how to flash firmware through SD card.
Thank you

See github.com/TheThingsProducts/gateway/firmware#installation:

  • Prepare a FAT32-formatted SD card with a folder called update.
  • Copy the firmware.hex and checksums files to the update folder.
  • Place the SD card in the gateway and power cycle the gateway.
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Hi Visser,

Gateway boot successful. Thank you.

Connected back to TTN.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: TTN GATEWAY central 2