Guide for the firmware install for c210

[APinchofDill]

Hey, hope you are well.

This repo helped me understand the process to get research started on OpenIPC. However, do you have a working guide / how to on installing the Firmware on the Tapo c210?

Thank you!

[xfarrow]

Hi, thank you for reaching out to me :)
Unfortunately I don't have any particular guides except for the official one.

Let me know if I can be helpful in any other way. Have a nice day!

P.S. Their Telegram channel has a lot of talented and kind devs who will surely help you.

[konasimakopoulos]

Adding information here in case anyone stumbles upon this:

1. Installed the OpenIPC lite 8MB image using an IC programmer but you might also be lucky using this.
2. Using the hardware UART I logged in and checked that everything worked ok.
3. Flashed a custom kernel with WiFi enabled (Use this ). You have to set/add BR2_PACKAGE_SSW101B=y in the file openipc-firmware/br-ext-chip-sigmastar/configs/ssc333_lite_defconfig.
4. Flash the new kernel and rootfs using the SD card and the sysupgrade method shown here
5. When the camera restarts set the following fw variables for your wifi credentials:
   fw_setenv wlanssid MySSID
   and
   fw_setenv wlanpass MyPassword
6. Use the following command to set the firmware to use the wifi IC (sets the camera to C110 mode but based on my tests WiFi and GPIOs are similar):
   fw_setenv wlandev ssw101b-ssc333-tapo-c110
7. Upon reboot the camera should connect to wifi and server the http server on its IP (set during initial install).

Edited to correct some mistakes.

[jla-42]

Hi @konasimakopoulos, as the C210 does not have an ethernet port (at least mine does not), how did you transfer the image to the camera? I tried with the mmc command, but without success.
Thanks.

[konasimakopoulos]

Hey @jla-42 , let me add a bit more info:
The C210 comes with a very limited uboot bootloader by default (where you input the commands you mentioned). So most of the commands mentioned in the OpenIPC install guide will not work.

1. The first step would be to flash the OpenIPC bootloader (as described here should work). You should also take the chance to backup the original firmware here.
2. Restart the camera and the new bootloader should support the commands mentioned. You can then use the SD card slot of the camera to load the full firmware image. Write the image on a FAT32 formatted SD card. For an 8MB image the instructions below should apply (taken from here). Remember to replace the variables ${soc}, ${baseaddr} and ${filesize} with the correct values.

mw.b ${baseaddr} 0xff 0x200000
fatload mmc 0:1 ${baseaddr} uImage.${soc}
sf probe 0; sf erase 0x50000 0x200000; sf write ${baseaddr} 0x50000 ${filesize}

mw.b ${baseaddr} 0xff 0x500000
fatload mmc 0:1 ${baseaddr} rootfs.squashfs.${soc}
sf probe 0; sf erase 0x250000 0x500000; sf write ${baseaddr} 0x250000 ${filesize}

3. After this completes the camera should boot to a default OpenIPC image.

[jla-42]

Hello @konasimakopoulos, thank you for the input, will investigate it.