Flashing The things gateway from 1.0.6 to 1.0.9 problems

sjoerd
Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:05:42 +0000
TTKG - The Things Kickstarter Gateway

Hi,
After some years I decided to bring the Things Gateway Backers Edition back in action. It turned out that it had 1.0.6 firmware onboard but despite that it seemed to work ok with v3 (registered it today). So I was quite happy but still a bit worried that the device wasn’t on the minimum required v3 firmware version (1.0.8)

OTA firmware didn’t seem to kick in and also the SD card firmware upgrade did not work so I decided to take the Pickit 3 and flash the new firmware in directly according to the instructions listed here: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/gateways/gateway/programhexfile/

All seems to go fine but after flashing the device doesn’t start up anymore. Only a single blue led is on. No activity on the uart.

What can be wrong? The new IPE seems to use a different memory address range?

Any help / info appreciated

Programming output:

Connecting to MPLAB PICkit 3…

Currently loaded firmware on PICkit 3
Firmware Suite Version…01.56.09
Firmware type…PIC32MZ
Programmer to target power is enabled - VDD = 3.250000 volts.
Target device PIC32MZ2048EFM144 found.
Device ID Revision = A1
DEVSN0 = ec41281f
DEVSN1 = 8b3f5410
Loading code from C:\\temp\\firmware-with-bootloader.hex…
Approximate memory usage: 46%
2026-03-27 19:48:29 +0100 - Hex file loaded successfully.

Erasing…
Erase successful
2026-03-27 19:48:41 +0100 - Programming…

Device Erased…

Programming…

The following memory area(s) will be programmed:
program memory: start address = 0x1d000000, end address = 0x1d1fffff
boot config memory
configuration memory
Programming/Verify complete
2026-03-27 19:51:13 +0100 - Programming complete

UART logging when it still ran ok on the 1.0.6 firmware:

**************************
*   The Things Network   *
*      G A T E W A Y     *
**************************
Firmware name: AmazingAckermann, type: 0, version: 1.0.6, commit: d8cb4c30, timestamp: 1558077579
Bootloader revision: 1, commit: 7167873a, timestamp: 1496411298
Build time: May 17 2019 07:20:37
Reboot reason: 0x03
BOOT: (persisted info) 6F 72 72 65 01 03 5F 6E A7 2F 72 B4 B4 37 DD E6




WIFI: Entering state 0
WIFI: Entering SCAN state 0

MAIN: Initialisation complete
LORA: Changing state from 0 to 0

MAIN: Leaving state 0
MAIN: Entering state 1
SDCARD: Mounted disk
FLASH: Magic bytes found: wifi config present
FLASH: Magic bytes found: activation data present
FLASH: Magic bytes not found: no stored FOTA data present
FLASH: Loading Firmware Data
CNFG: (Firmware HASH (sha256)) FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
FLASH: Loading WiFi Data
..
..
MAIN: Leaving state 3
MAIN: Entering state 4
FLASH: Erasing FOTA Data
FLASH: Loading FOTA Data
FIRM: Requesting key ...
HTTP: Starting connection
HTTPS: Connection Opened: Starting TLS Negotiation
HTTP: Wait for TLS Connect
HTTP: TLS Connection Negotiation Failed - Aborting
HTTP: Close active socket 1
MAIN: Download firmware failed

MAIN: Leaving state 4
MAIN: Entering state 5
..
..

4 posts - 2 participants