Hi Everybody

I'd updated my Axpert clone Main Board with USB method to 41.17 perfectly

Now i want to update the display to 2.66 with RS232 method without succes.

My computer don't have RS232 so i bought a dongle USB --> RS232

Driver CH340 was installed and everything is OK i suppose.

When i start "Remote Panel Reflash Tool" with mcu.hex file, the connection can't be initiated.

I've tried to change speed of Com port to 9600, i've tried on Win XP and Win 10 without succes.

Can i try to update MCU 2.66 with USB method like with main board ???

Thanks for your help

 

 

Hi 87

I can't acces too with WatchPower on RS232

Maybe my USB dongle don't work ?

I had seen so many stores that put their mark on the same inverter made in China, maybe Axpert does the same and is not the actual manufacturer ???

So i'm lost 😉

 

On 2021/08/04 at 11:54 PM, bib60 said:

I've tried to change speed of Com port to 9600, i've tried on Win XP and Win 10 without succes.

No need to set the speed; the reflash tool does that. It actually starts at 2400 bps and changes speed part way through.

It looks like your USB to RS232 converter isn't compatible. From the AEVA page; these are known-good converters available from South Africa:

• For South African readers: a USB to serial adapter recommendation (Communica) and another recommendation (Mecer).

Quote

Can i try to update MCU 2.66 with USB method like with main board ???

No. Only DSP firmware can be updated that way. The removable display firmware has library code that is needed to access the USB port, and when that firmware is erased, that goes away. There isn't enough RAM to hold the firmware image in RAM, possibly plus the flash code, I suspect.

14 hours ago, bib60 said:

I had seen so many stores that put their mark on the same inverter made in China, maybe Axpert does the same and is not the actual manufacturer ???

All the legitimate inverter-chargers are designed by Voltronic Power in Taiwan, and manufactured in mainland China. They are all rebranded; Voltronic is an Original Design Manufacturer. You can't buy a Voltronic Power branded inverter-charger. I think that just means that Voltronic don't want to deal with customers directly; the resellers have to do all the initial hand holding, warranty replacement or repair, and so on. About 2015 (just 2 years after the first model), the clones started appearing. The clones have unknown compatibility and unknown quality, and the circuits might not be copied properly.

So yes, they are all made in China, and there are many names on the covers, but there is a world of difference between a clone and a genuine. It could happen that some clones may actually have better quality and reliability than the originals, but that's unlikely. Even if that happened, they have stolen the intellectual property of the original designers, and haven't paid the full price of designing and refining a product from scratch. So I don't condone deliberately purchasing a clone, but many customers (and more than a few resellers) get caught out not knowing that they are dealing with clones.

Thanks Coulomb

Does it mean that Axpert Inverter  is a Voltronic rebranded or clone rebranded too with bad quality ?

Mine is a WKS EVO II, on Inverter i can find this product number :   ofvm35K4K-48 

You can find him here in Italy --> https://www.solarpower24.it/prodotto/primo-vm-iii-5000-48-5000-watt-48-volt/

Normally Axpert VMIII is a 4000W PV input, mine is a 5000W

So is it a clone from China ?

I will try to find better RS232 dongle

The link from Communica, the dongle cost 742€ !!!  🤬

Thanks a lot

 

 

Edited August 5, 20215 yr by bib60

13 hours ago, bib60 said:

Does it mean that Axpert Inverter  is a Voltronic rebranded or clone rebranded too with bad quality ?

"Axpert" is a name that the manufacturer, Voltronic Power, uses to describe their models. Some resellers keep that name, others do not.

13 hours ago, bib60 said:

Mine is a WKS EVO II, on Inverter i can find this product number :   ofvm35K4K-48 

You can find him here in Italy --> https://www.solarpower24.it/prodotto/primo-vm-iii-5000-48-5000-watt-48-volt/

Ah, Primo. Those seem to be legitimate; they even appear at the top of our AEVA PIP-5048MS topic. That means that at one point, either Weber or myself decided it appeared to be genuine, and we include it in that list so that owners of those inverters can find our topic.

13 hours ago, bib60 said:

Normally Axpert VMIII is a 4000W PV input, mine is a 5000W

From http://voltronicpower.com/en-US/Product/Detail/Axpert-VM-III-1.5KVA-3KVA-5KVA, I see 5000W beside "Maximum PV array power". That agrees with the Primo website you linked to.

13 hours ago, bib60 said:

So is it a clone from China ?

One can never be totally sure these days, but I'd say 99.99% no. But made in China, as they all are (genuine Voltronics, and likely 99%+ of clones).

13 hours ago, bib60 said:

I will try to find better RS232 dongle

The link from Communica, the dongle cost 742€ !!!  🤬

That certainly doesn't sound right for what it is, or should be.

Thanks Coulomb

My 5kW is not enough for my house, i must take care all the time about what i'm using 😀

So i will buy Axpert Max 7.2kW or 8kW from Italy, they answered me that it's Voltronic made. 

I've bought new dongle RS232, i will see if it's working better

 

Hi

So i've received my new dongle, my MCU was updated to 2.66 correctly 😉

WatchPower and ViewPower are working perfectly.

If you want to have this dongle, it's not really expensive and compatible with Windows 10 😉

GREEN Câble Série USB RS232 DB9 Adaptateur USB Mâle vers RS232 Mâle Support Windows 10 8 7 Mac OS X Linux pour Routeur Switch Telescope (1M)
par UGREEN GROUP LIMITED UK
En savoir plus : https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00QUZY4UG/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_DV9RBEX4X0QWHDRJANFT?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

Edited August 10, 20215 yr by bib60

@Coulomb Holy Hell!!!!  Thanks for this bit of info.  I've been racking my brain on this exact same problem after updating the dsp firmware with usb. After lots of posts finally discovered this one.  Guess I gotta go dig around for a usb2serial now.  😉   "No. Only DSP firmware can be updated that way. The removable display firmware has library code that is needed to access the USB port, and when that firmware is erased, that goes away. There isn't enough RAM to hold the firmware image in RAM, possibly plus the flash code, I suspect."

So it looks like I flashed my RCT-AXVM3-3K24V with the wrong remote panel firmware and it is now dead, no display or lights visible. The inverter is running.

I have tried most of the options on the forum and wondering if anyone could assist, previous remote panel CPU version 102.71 was shown in Watchpower.

If I buy a replacement remote panel I assume it will be plug and play?

8 hours ago, drew137 said:

it looks like I flashed my RCT-AXVM3-3K24V with the wrong remote panel firmware and it is now dead

As a point of interest, what firmware did you attempt to load it with? 102.71 sounds fairly recent to me.

8 hours ago, drew137 said:

no display or lights visible.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you can't attempt to retry the MCU reflash. It should be running the bootloader when you power up, ready to try again. Have you tried to restart the reflash?

8 hours ago, drew137 said:

If I buy a replacement remote panel I assume it will be plug and play?

I believe so, IF it's a removable display for a VM III or a King I. You probably can't overwrite the firmware for other models with VM III / King display firmware, at least without a bit of mucking about. If you get one from your inverter supplier, they should be able to get you the exact right kind, hopefully with reasonably recent firmware already installed.

1 hour ago, Coulomb said:

As a point of interest, what firmware did you attempt to load it with? 102.71 sounds fairly recent to me.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you can't attempt to retry the MCU reflash. It should be running the bootloader when you power up, ready to try again. Have you tried to restart the reflash?

I believe so, IF it's a removable display for a VM III or a King I. You probably can't overwrite the firmware for other models with VM III / King display firmware, at least without a bit of mucking about. If you get one from your inverter supplier, they should be able to get you the exact right kind, hopefully with reasonably recent firmware already installed.

Hey @Coulomb thanks for the reply, I have read probably most of your threads on this in the last 24 hours since I made my massive error!  I tried to load version Remote_Panel_Reflash_MCU(02.61).rar which was stupid in hindsight as I had a much higher version number. The flash completed successfully with no errors but the screen is dead.

I have tried to power off, power on then start the flash again and I get an error cannot communicate, the port opens on the software fine but it seems the comms port on the screen is dead. The bluetooth connection works but shows no SN or any detail on software versions.

The OEM has a spare display which I have ordered, I assume that if I only flashed the MCU firmware I could not have harmed the main firmware? I am hoping that by simply replacing the display with a new one I'll be back in business?

Edited October 12, 20223 yr by drew137
spelling....

15 hours ago, drew137 said:

I tried to load version Remote_Panel_Reflash_MCU(02.61).rar which was stupid in hindsight as I had a much higher version number. The flash completed successfully with no errors but the screen is dead.

It's disturbing that this bricked your display. As far as I can tell, there is no reason for this. Maybe there really is something different about firmware with version numbers 1xx.xx. So far, it just seems random to me whether the leading 1 is present or not. But maybe it indicates something important and incompatible.

15 hours ago, drew137 said:

I have tried to power off, power on then start the flash again and I get an error cannot communicate, the port opens on the software fine but it seems the comms port on the screen is dead.

That seems to suggest that the display firmware is present, but at least one of the tasks is crashing due to some horrendous incompatibility. Or the whole thing is crashed. If you had a suitable JTAG device, you could presumably erase the display firmware segments (NOT the bootloader segment!) and try again. There are posts on how to do this on this forum, but I realise that this is not for everyone.

15 hours ago, drew137 said:

The bluetooth connection works but shows no SN or any detail on software versions.

That's really strange. Does it behave any different if you turn the inverter off? I would assume so.

If so, that indicates that the Bluetooth processor is running, so the display at least has power. But the Bluetooth processor gets its data from the display processor. So that's another indication that the display firmware is crashed.

15 hours ago, drew137 said:

The OEM has a spare display which I have ordered, I assume that if I only flashed the MCU firmware I could not have harmed the main firmware?

99.9% sure. Your display firmware seems to have crashed; it's vaguely possible that it has sent a command to the main DSP to initiate a reflash, but that seems extremely unlikely.

15 hours ago, drew137 said:

I am hoping that by simply replacing the display with a new one I'll be back in business?

That depends on what they send you. Hopefully they know what they are doing, but if they send you say the display for an Axpert MAX, then it won't work, and you won't be able to update that display with VM III / King display firmware, only other Axpert Max firmware. But in that case, there are ways that this can be gotten around, I believe. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, let us know here and I'll try to guide you.

3 hours ago, Coulomb said:

It's disturbing that this bricked your display. As far as I can tell, there is no reason for this. Maybe there really is something different about firmware with version numbers 1xx.xx. So far, it just seems random to me whether the leading 1 is present or not. But maybe it indicates something important and incompatible.

That seems to suggest that the display firmware is present, but at least one of the tasks is crashing due to some horrendous incompatibility. Or the whole thing is crashed. If you had a suitable JTAG device, you could presumably erase the display firmware segments (NOT the bootloader segment!) and try again. There are posts on how to do this on this forum, but I realise that this is not for everyone.

That's really strange. Does it behave any different if you turn the inverter off? I would assume so.

If so, that indicates that the Bluetooth processor is running, so the display at least has power. But the Bluetooth processor gets its data from the display processor. So that's another indication that the display firmware is crashed.

99.9% sure. Your display firmware seems to have crashed; it's vaguely possible that it has sent a command to the main DSP to initiate a reflash, but that seems extremely unlikely.

That depends on what they send you. Hopefully they know what they are doing, but if they send you say the display for an Axpert MAX, then it won't work, and you won't be able to update that display with VM III / King display firmware, only other Axpert Max firmware. But in that case, there are ways that this can be gotten around, I believe. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, let us know here and I'll try to guide you.

Thanks @Coulomb hoping to get the replacement screen tomorrow from the supplier. It is a direct replacement so hopefully that solves my issue.

Will keep you posted, thanks again for your feedback.

On 2022/10/13 at 12:18 PM, drew137 said:

Thanks @Coulomb hoping to get the replacement screen tomorrow from the supplier. It is a direct replacement so hopefully that solves my issue.

Will keep you posted, thanks again for your feedback.

@Coulomb I can confirm that the replacement screen has solved the issue - not sure if the display went faulty after the upgrade.

So all is good, thanks for your inputs.