Sometimes, your Hardware Controller might become bricked during firmware upgrades mostly due to unpredictable power failure. Through firmware recovery, you will make your bricked device enter Recovery Mode to recover its firmware and work as normal.

 

Working Principle

 

There’s a detection mechanism for devices to check the completeness of the system before starting, when devices find their systems are crashed and can’t boot successfully, we can hold the reset button for 5~8s until devices enter Recovery Mode. Then the devices will automatically launch the small HTTP server to show the Recovery page, and we can type the IP address of the devices in the browser to load the complete firmware to recover the software system.

 

Experiment Equipment

 

•  1 x PC

• 1 x Switch (TL-SG2210P)

• 1 x OC200

• 1 x Clip (or other tools that can hold the reset button of the device)

• Ethernet Cables

 

Network Topology

Topology 1

Topology 2

 

 

Note: The DHCP server shouldn’t be included in any topology.

 

 

Configuration Steps

 

Assume you are upgrading your OC200/OC300, and suddenly you run across a power failure and your device becomes bricked, now you could try to recover it through firmware recovery. We take OC200 as an example here.

 

Set Static IP address for the PC

 

1. Open your PC, go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings > find your Ethernet Adapter and right-click it to go to Properties.

 

 

2. Double-click Internet Protocol Version4 (TCP/IPv4) in the item list > choose Use the Following IP address and set as rules below, set the IP address/Subnet mask as 192.168.0.100/ 255.255.255.0.

 

 

 

Firmware Recovery 

 

1. Download the firmware of OC200 from the official website of TP-Link and unzip the compressed file.

2. Connect your PC to the ETH2 port of OC200.

3. Keep holding the reset button of OC200.

4. Plug in the power cable of OC200 from the PoE device and wait for the Cloud LED to flash and then extinguish.

5. Release the reset button.

6. Open a browser->input 192.168.0.253 in the address bar and enter it.

Note: please make sure you are reaching OC200/300 through HTTP, otherwise you’ll get refused to connect.

7. Choose the firmware you downloaded before, and wait for the Upgrade to finish.

 

 

 

 

Verification

 

The OC200 was running on v5.6.4 at first, after recovery it will use the version you downloaded. You can check it in Controller > >About.