I mean developer mode.
How can i perform this step on GJ2CQ?
"After about 3 seconds, the LED should pulse orange and amber. Now press SW7"
Sorry for taking so long to respond but if you look on the board you'll see a silk screened label for where SW7 would go. There 4 solder pads next to it that you can either add a button to the middle 2 pads or just bridge them the a flat head screwdriver.
Thanks @C_S827 for the reply. I will give it a try.
I have one of these devices and soldered to the pads as described to obtain a USB port.
However, when it comes to booting OpenWrt, I am out of luck.
I removed WP screw. Holding reset while powering on until blinking amber, then release reset & bridging SW7 (blink purple then reboot).
This gets into developer mode (blue, then blinking purple) but the USB drive does not show that it is connected. Additionally, bridging SW7 just flashes purple again, I believe indicating it cannot find an attached USB drive.
I have checked and the wiring to the debug pads is correct. I have 5V on the USB port, and D+/D- are connected as indicated (I have also tried reversing them, to no effect).
The device also does not work with the official recovery image on the USB created using the OnHub tool (Chromebook). So it seems it doesn't detect the USB at all. I've tried different USB sticks, same result: no light indicating connection.
@C_S827 any ideas?
Edit: never mind, it was a layer 1 issue. The USB header -> USB A port adapter I was using doesn't work anymore. The OpenWrt factory image doesn't work, but that's unrelated to this.
Using the pads of the debug header, I was able to successfully flash this device.
The previous Wiki instructions for installing OpenWrt are not very good, and didn't work for me.
The steps that worked for me were:
- write the factory image (
chromeos_9334.41.3_gale_recovery_stable-channel_mp.bin) using the OnHub utility (on a Chromebook) - Restore the router via the soldered USB port, and the SW7 instructions from @C_S827
- Flash galeforce and wait for the pulsing purple LED (although SSH did not work after this; you may be able to omit this step)
- Write OpenWrt initramfs image to USB using the OnHub utility and follow the Wiki instructions to boot and install
I have updated the Google Wifi wiki page to link to this thread for other GJ2CQ device owners.
@hmartin, thanks for the info.
- Can you confirm that you only connected 4 usb pins to the debug pins and used dc barrel input for powering the device?
- In the current instructions for
Factory Reset, it does not mention using SW7 button. Can you confirm if you needed to use SW7 to boot the stock image or only for booting galeforce/openWRT images?
- Yes, only the 4 wires for USB and the DC barrel for power.
- SW7 pads need to be used to enter developer mode, as described in the installation instructions. Once OpenWrt is installed, no physical interaction is required. The boot process is slightly longer than stock FW as the bootloader waits for a timeout before booting into developer mode (OpenWrt).
@hmartin, I soldered 4 pins and attempted flashing the firmware with no success.
I tried various combinations of stock firmware and galeforce but none of them seem to start network on LAN port. I tried various flash drives and tried several ones which have LED activity indicator. Based on LED activity indicators, Google Wifi seems to ignore them completely.
Do you have any other suggestions that could allow me to make some progress?
@C_S827, I saw that you wrote:
The only other issue that i had come up along the was was just from trying to skip the initial flashing the OEM firmware before putting in the OpenWRT firmware but after that i got it done with in about an hour
Can you explain what you meant there? How were you able to skip this step?
This is an obvious question, but did you create the flash drive using the OnHub utility? Nothing else will work.
I assume you are also shorting the pins of SW7 as described in the original instructions? What colour(s) does the LED go through?
Yeah, I was using the chrome extension on MacOS to flash to USB drive.
Yes, shorting SW7 as well until the LED starts to blink with purple.
@hmartin, regarding shorting sw7, actually I am not even able to do a factory reset which is the first step. I tried several flash drives I could get access to and none of them allowed me to do it. If I understand the documentation correctly, for factory reset I don't need to use SW7. Maybe this means that the USB drives I was using are not accepted by Google wifi. I do have a couple of USB drives with LED activities, and all of them light up when connected but do not blink - which means there is no activity. I re-checked the wiring many times already.
Maybe I will need to find another USB drive. Have you had any problems with finding a working USB drive? Do you know make/model of the drive you used?
Hi, just wanted to share what worked for me (I had similar issues). First take a look at the flash drives partitions. After using OnHub utility multiple times I needed to clean them up.
Now for factory reset and installing I had to insert the flash drive before starting the device.
Factory reset:
Plugin flash drive
Hold reset button (16sec)
Power on device
After static white, blue flashing, orange flashing the led turned off
After 5-7 min it rebooted
I go blue pulse, fast blue flashing, blue pulse again
Installation:
Power off device
Insert flash drive with OpenWrt
Hold reset button (16sec)
Power on device
Static white, blue flashing, orange flashing
Shorten sw7
Wait for reboot and purple flashing
Shorten sw7
LED went off
Blue flashes, blue pulse
Ping 192.168.1.1
I used these generic USB A to MicroSD card readers you can buy on AliExpress for ~$2, where the MicroSD slides into the bottom of the USB A port.
There were some issues but mainly related to unreliable SD cards and misunderstanding that OnHub is required to write the image.
I tried this one my Google Wifi (after doing a AC1304 version before without much issues). My poor solder skills turned out to most likely wreck my pads. Does anyone have any good tips on solder, and any pics of said soldering?
I found an old USB A female to male cable and cut it and did a few attempts to solder but gave up and not sure now if I have destroyed the pads completely or not but late last night manufactured somewhat of an jig using needles with the cables soldered onto stuck onto the pads and held in place with some putty (clay). The first step fails after SW7 reboot *shorting it seemed a bit hit and miss also It get stuck with purple light after the first reset and what I could read it means it can't find the USB key. *both keys used was same as for the AC1304.
So any jigs or hints on solder would be greatly appreciated. I got a few old ones left to mess with but rather not break another one since it will have an effect on my setup.
Have a solder iron for electronics with a pointy tip.
Apply a bit of grease to the pad and wire.
Fix wire on target (using tape or a soldering stand, if you run out of hands)
An important point is: Put the preheated solder iron tip to the target location where you need the heat, wait for a moment and then narrow the solder wire not towards the target, but towards the solder iron, a bit above the tip while the tip stays on the target.
The thinner the solder wire, the easier it is to dose the right amount (having one with integrated grease also helps).
I recommend to watch some Youtube tutorials about soldering, seeing it done right helps a lot.
Just for the avoidance of doubt, not the oily stuff, but flux (rosin/ resin) - and not plumber's flux (which is highly acidic and will corrode everything away) but electronic (ideally 'no-clean', even though you should still clean away leftover flux with >>90% isopropanol afterwards) flux.
I wanted to share about the flashing hardware part.
The wiki says: USB-C hub with power-delivery (to support both USB storage and USB-C power supply)
I tried to do it without that. I took a old USB-A to USB-C cable that had data lines. Cut it to half. Then I soldered on the USB-C part a USB-A female socket and also soldered there +5v and GND to give power to the device. The flashing part I used infatius guide and it worked.
Alos the USB-C OTG wire could work if power can be added to there somehow. USB-C OTG has also a additional resistor 5,1k, but it is not needed with this device. The USB port is working without it.
I would like to express my sincere thanks for the excellent work. This thread brings together all the expertise needed to successfully carry out the flashing process.
I have currently flashed four Google WiFi units with the barrel plug and one with USB-C. Overall, it went completely smoothly, except for one very small incident.
After about four flashes, the USB stick with the Google recovery image suddenly stopped working. Even rewriting it with OnHub didn’t help.
It was only after I deleted all the partitions under Linux (and there were quite a few!) that I was able to flash successfully again.
Now I had some really bad luck soldering the USB port on one of my boards. Even though I was soldering at a very low temperature, the D- pad detached immediately — strange that it came off so easily without any force applied.
Has anyone found an alternative point on the board where the USB D- line can be soldered? I’d be grateful for any tips. It would be a shame if I had to throw away the Google Gale.