Cannot get past 12.5 on "Shelly Plus PlugS" whatsoever

[zeus86]

First of: by now I spent at least 3-4 hours crawling github issues and discussions as well as the docs and reflashed the device countless times by now. i tried e.g. tasmota32solo1.bin and tasmota32.bin of 12.5 as well as the safeboot-versions and some others, manually and via OTA.

My PlusPlugS is still on 12.5, because i did not upgraded for a while, but just today (I know, a bit late) i realized, that i cannot upgrade beyond v12.5 (on a regular-sized image). As i mentioned, I read everything relevant to this topic (I think), so to me the problem is clearly the partition layout.

However, I tried all the suggested ways of recent as well as older versions of partition manager and wizard just are not working for me. Either Partition Wizard does not start (and therefore has no menu entry) and fails with
bry: failed to run compiled code 'io_error' - inconsistent number of builtin objects. (current build, sha256sum 6e242a38c99641d8780063b16dc2cafbc9925fa3f3d78113816a3f4d7b81c284 Partition_Wizard.tapp ) or the app does not show meaningful things at all (see screenshots). Unfortunately the docs are very limited regadring this. They describe what the new safeboot-layout looks like and that there is a safeboot image, but thats it, no tutorial how to archieve this at all. On top of that, there aren't good screenshots on how the upgrade process is supposed to look like at all, so i'm totally stuck here.

I also resetted the config and just did an autoconf+wifi-join for the device and tried to start over from there. I can flash 13.0.0-safeboot, but you cannot really do anything meaningful from there without any helpful docs. Heck, i did not even find good documentation on how to explicitly flash (and then boot to) the second partition, because i suppose, you have to boot from there to wipe out or change the first one...

my hw and current partition layout:

in the screenshot above i am on partition app_0 (at least I suppose that's what the asterisk is for). However, regardless if I am on app_0 or app_1, when I use an older version of partition_wizard, that at least works (sha256sum 77dea377f2726c4a715adacc4f4d3209aecc97709a5185358626978e3f93cf99 Partition_Wizard.tapp), it does not show anything helpful:

(yes, this is the whole content of the page)

In this window nothing is clickable at all.
Not so much better does the partition manager look like:

(yes, this is also the whole content of this page)

The relevant log-messages i've seen regarding this are this one:

BRY: Exception> 'attribute_error' - the 'Partition_info' object has no attribute 'size'
stack traceback:
<unknown source>: in function `page_show_partition`
<unknown source>: in function `page_show_partitions`
<unknown source>: in function `page_part_mgr`
<unknown source>: in function `<lambda>`

The manager "sometimes" says no need to click, this is already the active partition or something like that in the tooltip. However, nothing is clickable at all anyways. As far as i have observed, this also shows always app_0 as active, regardless of what the info-tab says. I think this happens when app_1 is active, and it looks like this:

(the screenshot above shows the partition manager, however, the partition wizard definitively shows app_0 as the active one, even if the info tab says otherwise. If so, the errors in the log are slightly different:

BRY: Exception> 'type_error' - unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'nil'
stack traceback:
<unknown source>: in function `page_show_spiffs`
<unknown source>: in function `page_show_partitions`
<unknown source>: in function `page_part_mgr`
<unknown source>: in function `<lambda>`

So please, any brave soul out there, please enlighten me how the heck to proceed from here, what I have done wrong, and how to avoid this situation at all. I suppose, what I'm seeing is not normal behaviour, otherwise i think i would have already seen issues regarding this. I am really not frustrated easily with such things, but man, this one made my hair grey...

thanks in advance.

[zeus86]

PS.: no, i won't rip apart a plastic-welded plug to flash the plug via serial if someone comes up with that. I know that this will most probably work very easy, but no way......

[Jason2866]

Use the matching Tools to your version. See #18983 (reply in thread)
If PartitionWizard does not work you can try to resize the Partition with PartitionManager. If working this will rebuild the somehow not consistent Partition scheme. Do not try to load safeboot manually. This will not work.
If you have already done. Upgrade device twice with tasmota32-solo1 v12.5

[zeus86]

the builds in exactly this thread are what i tried. the older ones from https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/raw/eb3de9c73a23e5559123dd85df70f844aaa46f33/tasmota/berry/modules/Partition_Wizard.tapp :

• Partition Manager starts, looks like as seen in the screenshots.
• Partition Wizard starts, looks like as seen in the screenshots.

for the recent version also mentioned in that thread (https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/blob/development/tasmota/berry/modules/Partition_Wizard.tapp):

• partition manager: same as above
• partition wizard: error message as described.

to be clear: to my knowledge it is currently not possible to get to a state, where i am able to perform changes alltogether!

However, i will upgrade to tasmota32-solo1 v12.5 as advised, and get back with updates.

[zeus86]

No changes as expected. Here's what i did:

• flashed from http://ota.tasmota.com/tasmota32/release-12.5.0/tasmota32solo1.bin via OTA twice.

• Uploaded manager and wizard from https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/raw/eb3de9c73a23e5559123dd85df70f844aaa46f33/tasmota/berry/modules/ and restarted.

• Result:

  • wizard:
    
  • manager:
    
  • log:
    

• then i uploaded the recent version of both tapps from https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/blob/development/tasmota/berry/modules/ and restarted.

• Result:

  • manager:
    
  • wizard:
    • not available
  • log:
    

• System Info:

  • Model: Shelly Plug Plus S EU (black)
    
    

I hope this clarifies what the problem is. The things you suggest @Jason2866 i already tried.

[HFarryranz]

Same here! Shelly Plus Plug S.
I used today this URL https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/blob/master/tasmota/berry/modules/Partition_Wizard.tapp
Starting form 12.5. i was able to start migration.

BUT now I stuck in SAFEBOOT.

1. device;

Shelly Plus Plug S
Tasmota

Program Version 13.0.0(safeboot)single-core
Build Date & Time 2023-06-26T10:42:56
Core/SDK Version 2_0_10/4.4.5.230614

ESP Chip Id 5809908 (ESP32-U4WDH-D rev.3)
Flash Chip Id 0x164020 (DIO)
Flash Size 4096 KB
Program Flash Size 4096 KB
Program Size 789 KB
Free Program Space 42 KB
Free Memory 156.1 KB (frag. 21%)

Partition safeboot* 832 KB (used 94%)
Partition app0 2688 KB (used 69%)
Partition fs 448 KB

2. device stuck in safeboot

Shelly Plus Plug S 4 LEDs
Tasmota Plug_1

Program Version 14.1.0 (release-safeboot) single-core
Build Date & Time 2024-06-03T11:53:23
Core/SDK Version 3_0_0/5.1.4.240529

ESP Chip Id 11913844 (ESP32-U4WDH-D v3.1)
Flash Chip Id 0x164020 (DIO)
Flash Size 4096 KB
Program Flash Size 4096 KB
Program Size 812 KB
Free Program Space 19 KB
Free Memory 212.0 KB (frag. 39%)
Partition safeboot* 832 KB (used 97%)
Partition app0 2688 KB (used 29%)
Partition fs 512 KB

[Jason2866]

@HFarryranz Just can assume things happened since logs are hard to get. Probably the OTA convert process was not fully successful or not followed exactly. If the part where the Shelly bootloader is replaced was not successful the symptoms you see does fit.
Trying to update with the Shelly bootloader still there ends in a loop where always the firmware is started at address 0x10000. This is in Tasmota use case the safeboot firmware.
To recover the device only serial flashing is the way.

[zeus86]

Does really noone have an idea how to get around my problem?

[joba-1]

well my idea is as follows:
Jason2866 says: "To recover the device only serial flashing is the way."
you say: "no way......"
So before you say "I throw it away"
I say: "send it my way,"
I could use one, would be better for the environment anyways ;)

[zeus86]

Jason's statement refers to @HFarryranz issue, which is an entirely different issue, because it was soft-bricked half way during an upgrade. On mine i can flash everything up to 12.5, and it works normally, I just cannot get past 12.5 due to the crooked partition layout.

However, I don't mind the price of the device, but sending it via mail internationally would most likely be more expensive, than the device itself, so it really isn't environmental friendly. However, this a whole different discussion. In the first place i'd rather would be interested into a solution, because i did nothing special to be in this situation, so i assume, others might fall into this trap also. And no, serial flashing is not really a viable option for plastic-welded devices, at least not for regular usecases.

I really wish there would be more interest in actually finding out what the underlying problem is and how to solve this, in order to prevent such situations in the future.

[zeus86]

this discussion can be closed.

even tough the problem is not solved, the device no longer exists. i was hoping that these things can be dismanteled halfway destruction-free, but no way. they are glued (the glue can be dealt with some bending indeed), and even if you manage to dismantle the plug without ripping the wifi-foil-antenna apart, there is a riveted PE-connection from top to bottom. beside that, there are no explicitly exposed debug-headers to flash (that in itself wouldn't be a problem, you can attach wires to the PCB-module, but it would be quite fiddly).

so all in all, i destroyed the device during this exercise (somehow a coil inside the device broke off for no reason and was rattling in the device way before i managed to get inside, so it wasn't safe to use anymore anyways...).