Did I brick my Lich?

OWL Firmware
#1

After uploading a patch and clearing the store I ran into the problem of not getting the Lich to work properly.

When I turn on the device with nothing connected, the display shows the upside-down A, then acouple of seconds a L and after that the buttons alternate in lighting up. After 3-4 cycles it stays on the button A.

After I tried to reinstall the newest firmware (the Lich went into its bootloader) the webinterface displayed the upload successfull message but also something about watchdog reset.

I hope you can provide me with some help to get the device back to normal.

Cheers, Jakob

#2

Jacob,

Don’t worry about bricking it - as long as bootloader is present, you’ll be able to flash another firmware. @mars might have some ideas, but it’s safe to make a few more tries to flash firmware.

#3

The problem is perhaps with the default patch.
Does the device (in normal, firmware mode) show up as a MIDI interface? Which firmware does it report as having installed, when you go to the Device page?

If you can use the Device page, you could try Erase Storage (this will delete all settings and patches) and then store a ‘safe’ patch in slot 1.

#4

Going into the device page, the device seems to be recognized as a MIDI device but in bootloader mode. After using Erase Storage and restarting the unit the display showed an E but I was able to upload a patch. It seems like the problem is solved!

Maybe this problem can occur when having the device / patch website open in two or more windows ? I think I was working on a patch and opened a new window to see what I have stored into the other patch slots and deleted them.

Either way, thank you for your help!

1 Like
#5

Glad it worked!

It was probably just the default patch that wasn’t working properly (ie hanging or crashing), and sending you to the bootloader.
I don’t think having two windows open is a problem per se, but you wouldn’t want to do it while flashing a new firmware.

#6

This happened so many times by now when flashing firmware - and I’m pretty sure that the problem is not a broken patch (as in, the same patch would work if you write it again). I don’t understand how we can end with a corrupt patch unless firmware section size was changed between releases.

Btw, current storage code doesn’t handle corrupt storages correctly, it can easily get a hard fault in such situation. I was going to submit fix for this as part of bigger storage refactoring, but maybe it’s better to do it separately in advance.