Installation

Installation

Installing software on hardware devices can vary widely between different vendors and hardware designs.

Off the top of my head, I can think of the following methods to replace the stock firmware on your camera:

• Desolder the flash chip and reprogram it in a programmer (requires a soldering station, programmer with adapter, soldering skills).
• Use Ingenic USB Cloner and reprogram via USB port (requires a USB OTG port on the camera, USB cable with data lines).
• Use programming clip on the chip on the board and re-program in place (requires a programmer and a clip).
• Use SD cart and replace firmware from U-Boot shell (requires SD card slot, UART connection, access to U-Boot shell).
• Use a No Tool Installation method if it exists for your camera. Check the list at Thingino Installers.
• Use wz_mini_hacks and get creative (requires SD card slot).
• Break the stock Linux password and get access to the shell (requires a UART connection)
• ... maybe something else

This document outlines several methods of installation, each tailored to accommodate the unique characteristics of various devices. Some installation methods are straightforward and do not require the user to open the device, such as using USB recovery methods or SD card installations. However, other methods may necessitate physically opening the device to access interfaces like UART. The following sections provide detailed instructions for each method, ensuring you can successfully install the software on your device regardless of its design or vendor.

Using the Ingenic USB Cloner tool

If your camera has a USB port, there is a good chance that you can install the firmware using Ingenic USB Cloner.

From an SD card

1. Compile or download the firmware file for your camera,
2. Get an SD card and format it to FAT.
3. Place the firmware file on the SD card as autoupdate-full.bin.
4. Reboot the camera with the SD card inserted.
5. If your camera already had the Thingino bootloader installed, it should flash the new firmware automatically.

If the auto-update fails, you can reflash the firmware manually from the bootloader shell.

From the U-Boot Shell

1. Follow steps 1-4 from the previous chapter.
2. Create a serial connection to the UART port of the camera.
3. While booting, press Ctrl-c to get into the bootloader shell.

Make sure the card is readable by the bootloader. Run mmc rescan followed by mmcinfo to verify the size of the card.

ingenic_T31L# mmc rescan
ingenic_T31L# mmcinfo   
Device: msc
Manufacturer ID: 0
OEM: 3000
Name: APPSD 
Tran Speed: 50000000
Rd Block Len: 512
SD version 2.0
High Capacity: No
Capacity: 60 MiB
Bus Width: 4-bit

Run fatls mmc 0 to check the contents of the card.

ingenic_T31L# fatls mmc 0
  8388608   autoupdate-full.bin 

1 file(s), 0 dir(s)

Execute the following commands line by line.

Use setenv flashsize 0x800000; for an 8MB flash chip, setenv flashsize 0x1000000; for a 16MB flash chip.

setenv flashsize 0x800000;
setenv baseaddr 0x82000000;
mw.b ${baseaddr} 0xff ${flashsize};
fatload mmc 0:1 ${baseaddr} autoupdate-full.bin;
sf probe 0; sf erase 0x0 ${flashsize};
sf write ${baseaddr} 0x0 ${filesize};
reset

From another firmware

Download the U-Boot image for your camera from https://github.com/gtxaspec/u-boot-ingenic/releases/, flash it to the first partition (mtd0), wipe the existing environment (mtd1) and reboot.

root@openipc-t31:~# curl -L -s -o /tmp/uboot.bin https://github.com/gtxaspec/u-boot-ingenic/releases/download/latest/u-boot-t31l.bin
root@openipc-t31:~# flashcp /tmp/uboot.bin /dev/mtd0
root@openipc-t31:~# flash_eraseall /dev/mtd1
root@openipc-t31:~# reboot

If your camera has an SD card slot, download the latest Thingino firmware for your camera from https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/releases/tag/firmware and save it as autoupdate-full.bin to a FAT32 formatted SD card. Insert the card into the camera and reboot. The camera will reflash itself and reboot again to populate the environment. You should now have a Thingino camera.

If your camera does not have an SD card slot, update the boot arguments to replace the dynamic overlay size with a hard-coded value to overcome the limitations of the existing kernel, enable the updates, and reboot again.

root@openipc-t31:~# fw_setenv bootargs 'mem=${osmem} rmem=${rmem} console=${serialport},${baudrate}n8 panic=${panic_timeout} root=/dev/mtdblock3 rootfstype=squashfs init=/init mtdparts=jz_sfc:256k(boot),64k(env),${kern_size}(kernel),${rootfs_size}(rootfs),1024k(rootfs_data)${update}'
root@openipc-t31:~# fw_setenv enable_updates true
root@openipc-t31:~# reboot

Finally, download and flash the full thingino image for your camera. This will overwrite everything in the flash chip.

root@openipc-t31:~# curl -L -s -o /tmp/fw.bin https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/releases/download/firmware/thingino-vanhua_l34.bin
root@openipc-t31:~# flashcp /tmp/fw.bin /dev/mtd6
root@openipc-t31:~# reboot