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cory-eaves avatar image
cory-eaves asked

Cerbo GX Bricked - How to recover?

I did a firmware upgrade on my Cerbo GX, which somehow failed. Now the unit seems to be bricked. No lights, no bluetooth, no wifi, nothing on the screen etc. Power cycled several times. I tried to the factory reset with the file on the SD card, but I don't think it's booting enough to do this.

I also tried to put a bootable image on an SD card and boot from there. Nothing--but I'm not sure I'm doing that correctly.

I saw there is a way to logon via a serial cable, but I would need to buy one.

Please help! How can I recover my Cerbo GX?

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3 Answers
cory-eaves avatar image
cory-eaves answered ·

Ok, I was able to get it running again by booting it from the SD card. The newer versions (2.92) did not work, but when I went back to 2.6X it did. From there, I upgraded to the latest firmware and it seems to be working fine.

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Matthias Lange - DE avatar image Matthias Lange - DE ♦ commented ·
Great that you could find a solution for you and thanks for sharing it!
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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image
mvader (Victron Energy) answered ·

UPDATE MAY 2024: procedure is now properly documented in our manuals, see https://www.victronenergy.com/media/pg/Cerbo_GX/en/reset-to-factory-defaults-and-venus-os-reinstall.html for the Cerbo GX and similar chapters in the other product manuals, ie Ekrano GX and similar.



Nice! Your post, and seeing a few others recently, made me check how far we are to make a publicly documented procedure for this, and answer is far enough.

What I don’t understand is why you had to go back to 2.6x.

My initial typings are here, I’ll finish it up later. I tested this as well; thats how I made the photo at the bottom.


Warnings:

- before doing this procedure; first try the common factory reset procedure which is documented in the manual.

- only perform this procedure as a last resort: to fix a bricked device. A device that boots fine, but has some strange behaviour in some feature, will not benefit from this procedure.

- all data on the data partition will be wiped by this procedure. Meaning all settings, and so forth.

- this procedure does, unlike to common “reset to factory defaults instruction”, not rely on a properly booting device.

- when executed on a Cerbo GX prior to HQ2026, the wifi access point as well as some other (non crucial) feature won’t work anymore; since some factory installed data is missing. Per HQ2026 that data is stored in a more secure place (eeprom instead of data partition).

- On the VRM Portal you’ll have to reset the Device token. No new data will be accepted by the portal until that is done.


Steps (applies to Cerbo GX only!)

1. Download the installer image. This link (always) points to the latest official release: http://updates.victronenergy.com/feeds/venus/release/images/einstein/venus-install-sdcard-einstein.img.zip

2. Write that to a sdcard using the Balena Etcher application.

3. Insert sdcard and boot Cerbo GX

4. Wait at least 2 minutes. If you have a GX Touch, then you’ll see the progress on that. See image below.

5. After the two minutes, or after you’ve seen the message that the installation has been completed, remove the sdcard and power cycle the Cerbo GX.


eb8a0898-536f-430b-97fd-629335e05b7c.jpeg



eb8a0898-536f-430b-97fd-629335e05b7c.jpeg (255.5 KiB)
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Kevin Windrem avatar image Kevin Windrem commented ·
Great. Will this work for other platforms (CCGX, Venus GX, CanVu GX)?

I realize the RPI platforms have a different mechanism.


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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ Kevin Windrem commented ·
Hi, no. It won’t.


- CanVu: the amount sold of those devices is so low, that in all honesty I’d rather hand out a free Cerbo or Ekrano in case someone with a CanVU gets stuck.

- CCGX: there is a procedure; I’ll see if I can find that.

- Venus GX: some similar procedure might work; but needs looking into.

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CM avatar image CM mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·

Hello Mvader, what if one has a ccgx and not a CanVU…. and has been a good user for close to a decade, even got a free ccgx dongle for large systems directly from you many years ago , can one get a free upgrade to a cerbo GX. Already using the Ekrano but about setting up another system for my old folks , during the little time I was waiting to get back my Ekrano due to an RMA , I realised that the ccgx is truly slow when compared to the superior speed of the Ekrano or Cerbo ….

Just remembered I saw this thread while I was researching on how to fix my Ekrano before doing the RMA, Ekrano is back and all systems are perfect

Thank you

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·
Hi all, the venus os re-install procedure is now properly documented for Cerbo GX, Ekrano GX, Venus GX and CCGX. See updated message above for where to find that.
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nacho-eu avatar image
nacho-eu answered ·

thanks! this helped me!

I had this issue due to gui-mod and directly after that I updated to the beta.

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Related Resources

Cerbo GX product page

GX family product range

Cerbo GX & GX Touch datasheet

Cerbo GX Manual

Venus root access document

Additional resources still need to be added for this topic