question

This is a Victron community forum, not a Pylontech support forum.

But maybe @Ned Yu (Pylontech) can help here.

So, it seems there is a NEW US2000C version being shipped (that story with 8th and 9th serial number place), and those NEW US2000C devices need DIFFERENT firmware with DIFFERENT numbering. it is quite confusing.
I have
- US2000 (B plus), which apparently can be upgraded to 3.4
- US2000C, which takes 2.7
- US2000C, which takes 1.4

both 'C' version firmwares are in that .zip file. There is no firmware for US2000B, you need to download that separately.

I upgraded the 'old' 2000C with the 2.7 bin file and the 'new' 2000C by uploading the .zip file. They all survived.

Cheers

Johannes

well i am not a Pylontech specialist but i guess - case of send-in for repair.
so far i am holding off to flash my US2000 (B) because i rather want to be triple sure they take the 3.4 firmware i 'found' ..

Hi everyone,

I made some progress on diagnosing stuff. The used microcontroller is the Texas Instruments TM4C123BH6PZ, which can be programmed via JTAG. The board itself PHANTOM_SA_CMU_V10R07 has a jack (J304) which has pins connected to the microcontroller, fortunately the ones needed for connecting to it via JTAG.

Firmware can be flashed using the Texas Instruments EK-TM4C123GXL Evaluation Board and Texas Instruments UniFlash software.

I successfully flashed (verified afterwards) several different firmware .bin-files, but none of them brought my module back to life. If I pushed the SW button, at least some leds on both boards in the module turned on, but that was it.

I've got the feeling that the microcontroller might need a bootloader which is not in the firmware .bin-files.

I haven't received an answer from Pylontech service yet (Maybe they're in a lockdown?!), maybe they can provide the correct .bin-file with the bootloader included.

I had the thought that I might be able to dump the whole memory of the microcontroller in the other US2000B-Plus module and flash it on the microcontroller of the broken one, but I'm still hesitant, because there'd be the possibility of breaking the good module, too.

I'll share the information of the service, if I get any. If I can bring it back to life, I'll happily share the necessary steps including the JTAG pinout.

Does anybody have an idea what else I could try?

Kind regards

AthlonFX

@AthlonFX you are really getting into things ... well you could try to use jtag to read out the bootloader part, and combine it with the firmware image (or JUST use the bootloader part and see if that can work standalone).
I would not assume that the bootloader was toasted when you loaded via the BatteryView software, but the loaded software probably had a valid checksum/fingerprint but was not fitting the hardware .. in such a situation, often it would be enough to 'patch' one byte in the area where the software is loaded to invalidate the checksum and then hope that the bootloader will go into an emergency load mode.
but of course all speculations.

On my quest to update US2000B's, i have now flashed the first 2 batteries. The update also STOPS at 81%, and the coulomb dialog appears, but the devices seem to have no value set and i cannot set any value (get an error message). Batteries work, though, and show version 3.4
i stopped updating after 2 show the same behavior and contacted pylontech support, but no answer until now - so now i am stuck with an install with 2 updated and rest non-updated batteries. things work - but before i update them all i will wait for an answer.

Johannes

@jacola could you provide instructions how to read out the bootloader part (or even the whole memory) of the microcontroller via JTAG? I think there's no option in Uniflash, but I haven't read the corresponding manual throughly so far.

If I could successfully read out the whole memory, I would happily provide you the file and the needed instructions including the pinout.

I was able to read the whole memory of the microcontroller of the good module with UniFlash, it was quite easy (Memory pane, Export, range 0x0 to 0x3FFFF). After that, I successfully flashed the created .bin-file onto the microcontroller of the bad module.

The good news is the good module still works. But the bad module is still as dead as it was before. My guess is that the original flash with the wrong firmware somehow damaged the hardware.

@jacola do you have any other idea?

@jacola I nether have another working US2000B-Plus nor do I know anyone with one of these (not to mention that it'd have to have firmware V3.4 on it). I don't like giving up, but in this case, I guess the best idea is to wait for the answer of the Pylontech service. I hope they help me with getting it working again. I'll ask them about the technical background too, because I'd like to understand what happened and why my approach didn't work.

At least the evaluation board was only 35 €, so I didn't "waste" a lot of money. If I ever want to get into microcontroller programming, I can start with this - there's a programmable TM4C on the board.

Did you get any further with this? I have the same issue - batteryview sent 2.x .bin to my US2000C but it should have sent 1.4... Now my unit is unresponsive.

Remember to send the bill to all those posters on internet forums who give bad advice that inexperienced people insist on following.

Just for my curiosity.
Why did you try to update the firmware of a working unit? Was there a new interessting feature or bugfix you needed? What kind of "internal error issues" you had? Rendering the unit not working?

I wouldn't update firmware for the sake of having the latest number without any benefit. If it is not broken, don't fix it.

Read the change log before upgrading, often changes make things worse. A d never throw just something to your device and hope it will know if it can swallow it or not. Firmware updates wipe the storage and put a new OS on your device, it is just hex code, the system doesn't know if it is legit, it is the flash software that has to sort it out before uploading, and most is generic to alow big changes.

Have the same issue, one of my US2000C sudden has internal errors and drops out.
I would like to check which firmware in on, based on serial number is has the new chip which causes trouble (E2).

However, which cable I have to use to connect? RS232 serial to USB? Can somebody give me a link (amazon?)... I read not all cables are working and I did not find an official supply :/