unfortunately when I tried to plug in my ChipWhisperer-Lite today it no longer got recognized by my computer at all. I tried shorting the erase-pin while it’s plugged in and also while plugging it in to see if that would help and I could re-flash it but it is still not recognized. The 2 LEDs are lighting up, but very dim, not as bright as they used to light up.
Anybody has a clue what I can try to get it fixed or any pointers what I could check and what could be wrong with it? I’m a little bit puzzled as it suddenly stopped working, I first thought it might be some kind of data loss so it just somehow lost it’s firmware and reflashing is a solution, but that’s apparently not the solution.
thanks for your fast response! I wanted to reflash over USB, but the CW is not recognized at all. I tried doing it on windows first, but since I didn’t have any success there and the board is not recognized at all over USB I went to a Linux machine and watched dmesg while plugging it in, absolutely nothing.
Have you seen such behavior before? If yes, what was the cause of it?
On Linux at least, there was this problem/solution from a long time ago, but I’ve never actually seen it happen. I’m not sure it’ll fix your issue, but it might be worth a shot.
Just to confirm, it didn’t show up as a COM port on Windows either? What does your connection to the computer look like? Are you running it through a USB hub? Also, have you tried a different USB cable?
I believe that even with that bug it should produce the “new USB device” message in dmesg. I still attempted it, just to be sure, but that didn’t help.
It doesn’t show up as COM port on Windows. I tried a different USB cable now and I wanted to try it with a hub (great idea btw!) so I got an old USB 1.0 hub aswell as a USB 2.0 hub, no luck there either. I tested a different cable now aswell (one that I tested with a different device before, just to be sure), also no luck. I attempted to blow in the USB connector aswell just in case there is dust or something in there, but that didn’t help and also I wasn’t able to visually see anything wrong on the connector.
Also I tried a USB 3.0 port on my computer aswell as a USB 2.0 port.
Hmm, in that case I wonder if there’s some sort of damage on the TX/RX lines. Can you contact support@newae.com so that we can take back the board for repair/get you a new board?
Hi I am facing the same issue wanted to get further update on what happened here.
Lite board is not showing up on com port but they are stuck in boot loader mode.
I have two such boards with the same issue so don’t really think the TX/RX lines are damaged on both of them as for one of them i just freshly erased the firmware. Would be grateful if someone can assist on this.
Thanks
Do you have any sort of virtual machine running or something else that could be taking over the serial port? Are you able to see any other COM ports in device manager?
No, I am able to see other COM ports and If i just power the CW305 as well that is displayed as a com port but not the Lite board. Plugging/ Replugging in the CWLite had no effect. Tried it with different cables as well, no luck.
Wait, so you’re able to see the bootloader of the CW305, but not of the Lite? The only difference there would be that the CW305 is powered independently of the USB port. Perhaps your PC isn’t delivering power to the Lite properly? Are you running your Lite through a USB hub?
No the CW305 is not in boot loader mode. But its able to detect it as a COM device on my device manager when i plug in the power. I dont think its a power issue since i have been running the CWLite on same PC since a year or so seemed operational. Recently encountered an OS Error issue while using the LITE so saw one of the threads which mentioned to erase the firmware and update it. After erasing it via code, to complete erase i shorted the Erase pins on CW Lite board and now its stuck in boot loader mode not getting detected as a com port.
Update:
Was able to get one of the boards out of bootloader. I think the other one which I was trying probably has some Tx/Rx issue. Please do let me know what would be the course of action to get that fixed.
I had to short the erase pins while powered on and the functional Lite board (with a proper Tx/Rx maybe) got detected as a COM port (BOSSA) and I just uploaded the firmware for lite using below code.
import chipwhisperer as cw
programmer = cw.SAMFWLoader(scope=None)
programmer.program(‘COMx’, hardware_type=‘cwlite’)
In that case, can you contact support@newae.com so that we can swap that board out for you? Please include the serial number of the board. You can find that on the test sheet that came with your ChipWhisperer.