how to unbrick a RLC-511

[user_795552833015992_795552833015992]

I have a RLC-511 that has been working fine for a few years and decided for security to upgrade its firmware. So I uploaded IPC_51516M5M.2356_23062003.RLC-511.OV05A10.5MP.AF.REOLINK.pak via its webpage interface and it gave me the warning about performing upgrading, and to not reboot/interfere it.



So after about 30 min of waiting its still not showing as completed. I tried to access via webpage, and its down hard. So I rebooted, its still down hard.



Did a port mirror operation to a sniffer, the RLC511 is requesting DHCP DISCOVER and the server is answering with the usual answer of DHCP OFFER but then camera is never sending the DHCP REQUEST messge that it should send to progress in the DHCP process.



How can I unbrick this thing? Is there a TFTP recovery path here or some other way to recover this camera??

[joseph_1979]

@user_795552833015992_795552833015992 Did you perform a hard reset?

[user_795552833015992_795552833015992]

@user_795552833015992_795552833015992 Did you perform a hard reset?

It seems the upgrade also did a factory reset, I put the camera on a wide open vlan and a windows pc reolink client discovered it and I saw the camera HTTPS config was wiped off. So I reenabled HTTPS and was able to use the HTTPS client on the wide open vlan.

But then I put the camera back on its regular non-internet vlan, and now it refuses to come up fully. It seems the new firmware may have some mandatory phone home operation before it allows the camera to fully come up?

Things work just fine on the internet-allowed vlan, but on my private no-internet vlan where my cameras are (and where this camera in question has always bee), well this camera with new firmware wont fully boot up. I can see this in the network sniffing.

Have they really enforced a mandatory phone home before the camera starts working???

[user_795552833015992_795552833015992]

Although, sometimes, after a reboot on this internet-allowed vlan, its bootup process just gets stuck with DHCP, with the dhcp server giving the DHCP reply to the cameras broadcast request, but then the camera never sends the 3rd required DHCP transmit.

This new firmware is buggy, how can I revert?

[joseph_1979]

@user_795552833015992_795552833015992 I am not aware of any dependency. The new firmware is disabling https/http and one has to use the Win client to enable them. Did you try to log on the camera from the pc connected to the same vlan?

I have seen that if you set static IPs on their cameras (mine all WIFI) they still send the DHCP DISCOVER and await for the DHCP OFFER. They use this to determine whether there is still connectivity with the router. This is a bad design in engineering and they should ping the gateway.

Can you try to re-install the firmware on the Internet accessible vlan?

To get the previous fw you need to email support. Otherwise search for reolink fw archive and there is an unofficial site which archives the fw of all Reolink products.