firmware

How to restore a FS 613A M136 (FOSCAM CLON)

Este post lo escribí hace ya un tiempo debido a un problema que tuve con un clon de una cámara Foscam. El post está en inglés,dado que había gente a nivel mundial afectada por los clones y lo importante es divulgar este tutorial al máximo de gente posible.

Recordad que para seguir este manual con un clon de Foscam, se tiene que ser muy, pero que muy cuidadoso, tanto que incluso no me hago responsable de destrozos en vuestras cámaras.


* Caution: With this modifications the ip camera lose the warranty and this is not guaranteed to work for all ip cameras. I’m not responsible of a bad use of this manual, take care with all, cables, voltage, to weld ….

Perhaps you brought a very cheap ip camera in Ebay or others online shops in Xina. The ip camera didn’t have any information but is very similar like Foscam FI8908W and the last firmware is different than you have in your new ip camera …. if you update ip camera with the last FI8908W firmware, it will restart every 3 seconds, impossible to come back or delete the firmware. To solve this problem is noy easy, but is possible.

Is important identify the model and the factory of the ip camera:

In a small sticker indicate the model (FS 613A M136), and searching in Google we can deduce that this ip camera is a clon form EasyN Technology Co. Ltd company (http://www.easynp.com). This company manage a lot of differents models of ip cameras, all of them very similar like Foscam models. The webpage there is a lot of information of the ip cameras without their respective firmware.

Finally, I found the last firmware to FS 613A M136 ip camera (is very very very long history), and there are the files:

Device Firmware Version: lr_cmos_4_11_2_15
Device Embeded Web UI Version: aw_4_3_3_39

The FI8908W (Foscam) and the FS 613A M136 (EasyN) PCBs are the same:

FI8908W:

FS 613A M136:

And for more information about some parts of PCB with their datasheets:

DM9161AEP: Davicom 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet Physical Layer Single Chip Transceiver (PDF)
alc203: Realtek TWO CHANNEL AC’97 2.3 AUDIO CODEC (PDF)
W90N745CDG: Winbond 32-BIT ARM7TDMI-BASED MCU (PDF)
W9812G6IH-6: Winbond 2M X 4 BANKS X 16 BITS SDRAM (PDF)
S29AL016D90BAI013: Spansion 16 Mbit 3.0 Volt-only Flash memory (PDF)

This is a bit introduction about FS 613A M136.

What we need to restore?

We need to conect the ip camera with the computer (caution: the ip camera works with 3.3V), I used an USB to serial UART, it costs arround 9€

Now conect the pins with our FS 613A M136, but carefull, you need to cross RX with TX and TX with RX!!!

USB to Serial
—————
IP Camera
————-
3.3VTXRX

Gnd

==>==>==>

==>

3.3VRXRX

Gnd

Like this:

Look 4 pins: inorder 3.3V, Gnd, TX, RX (remember to cross TX and RX)
Follow the cables

Next step is upload the linux.bin and romfs_cmos_11_14_1_37.img file to the ip camera (W90N745CDG: Winbond 32-BIT ARM7TDMI-BASED MCU and W90N745 uClinux BSP User Manual).

Conect you your USB at the computer, and start the Hyperterminal with this configuration:

Conecting ussing: COM1 (select your default port)

Bits per second: 115200
Data bits: 8
Parity: None
Stop bits: 1
Flow control: None

Open the connection

Power on your ip camera (conect the power supply), Hyperterminal starts to show letters and press ESC

Now we can delete the memory of the ip camera. Write:

First => bootloader> del 6 (press enter and wait to finish)
Second => bootloader> del 7 (press enterand wait to finish)

And then we can upload the files roms.img and linux.zip (download here) and write with carefully:

bootloader> fx 7 linux.zip 0x7f020000 0x8000 -acxz (press enter)

Select: «Transfer -> Send file» or right click with the mouse and «Send», in a File browser choose the file linuz.zip with xmodem protocol

Repeat with next file:

bootloader> fx 6 romfs.img 0x7f0d0000 0x7f0d0000 -a (press enter)

At end input: booloader> boot (press enter)

Now you can disconect the cables and conect the ip camera to lan to upload the firmware.

To upload the firmware, download and install the program IPCamSetup.exe

Finally, you can configure your ip camera 🙂

If the files roms.img and linux.zip don’t work fine or not update, you can try with Foscam files (in my case I could update my EasyN cam with this files), you can donwload here.

More information:

http://www.gadgetvictims.com/2009/12/bring-your-fi8908w-paperweight-back-to.html
http://www.computersolutions.cn/blog/tag/foscam
How to restore Foscam IPCam in Spanish http://www.habitacion404.com/?p=128

Thanks:

Jasper Diepstraten

And sorry for my english 😛