SSC333 Compatibility (Tapo C110)

[cjdell]

Hello. I notice there is no guide for SSC333 however there are references to it in the source code. Does this mean that it could still work (unofficially) if I build the firmware myself? Is there any way I can help with the testing so support for this chip can be added?

Thank you

[viktorxda]

Hello, theoretically it should work due to the general compatibility of the SDK.
So far it hasn't been tested, if you feel adventurous you can try the SSC335 version and report back if it's working.

Edit:
This looks like an interesting device, can you provide some teardown photos?

[cjdell]

Thanks for the quick reply. Also noticed this file added 2 weeks ago:

https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/blob/master/br-ext-chip-sigmastar/configs/ssc333_lite_defconfig

Does this mean someone has tried already to make this work?

Here are the photos:

[viktorxda]

Thanks for the photos. Yes, Sigmastar gained a lot of attention recently and we are trying to expand the device list.
I have ordered the device to check it as well, this could potentially become a promising device for openipc.

[cjdell]

Here's the first boot log. The pad near "TP501" is the TX pin:
https://gist.github.com/cjdell/c48f95d9910f2e23fb0ee7dfa6a41d34

[flyrouter]

Please give information what version your C110 device is, v1.0, v2.0 or other.
Thank you.

[cjdell]

I think 2.0 according to the sticker on the PCB.

I tried to see if I could get the boot console today. Holding down Enter whilst plugging in the power cable didn't work as some have suggest for other SigmaStar products.

[viktorxda]

Do you have a programmer and soic clip available for direct write access?

[cjdell]

@viktorxda No but I will buy one. Can you recommend a good SOIC clip / programmer? I am willing to get my hands dirty with these devices.

[viktorxda]

The CH341A, it is not particularly good or powerful, but it is decent enough and easy to obtain.

[viktorxda]

I forgot to mention, for Sigmastar you can also use mstar-snander to read and write directly to the flash chip over the uart connection.

Replace bootloader:

snander -l 0x50000 -r C110_boot.bin -s
snander -l 0x50000 -e
snander -l 0x50000 -w u-boot-ssc333-nor.bin -s

Backup to sdcard:

mw.b ${baseaddr} 0xFF 0x800000; sf probe 0; sf read ${baseaddr} 0x0 0x800000; fatwrite mmc 0 ${baseaddr} tapo_c110.bin 0x800000

[cjdell]

@viktorxda I got the stock firmware extracted with the SOIC clip. The binwalk yielded a lot of interesting secrets within the binary. It's built on OpenWRT and most of the startup and initial config is written as plain text shell scripts. I'm willing to share the binary with you if you're interested.

I found the SSC333 build of OpenIPC and decided to try writing it directly with the SOIC clip but it bricked the device. Appears it doesn't like being programmed this way. Fortunately snander worked perfectly with the CH341A so thank you for telling me this otherwise I would have been stuck.

So, end result is OpenIPC is working on the C110! I had to extract ssw101b_wifi_usb.ko from the original firmware which was within the squashfs. Copied to the camera via SD card so it's now on the overlay filesystem. Manually loaded the module and configured wpa_supplicant and the RTSP stream came to life.

Very impressed with the project. To round this off as a success I still need to get the IR/night vision configured which means trial and error searching for the GPIO pins. Also need to make the kernel module for WiFi auto load. Tomorrow's job...

Thanks for all your help so far. Going to buy more C110's as the price/performance for these cameras is now extremely appealing.

[viktorxda]

Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad that it worked out in the end.

An initial wiki entry for the C110 with the gpios has been created here: https://github.com/OpenIPC/wiki/blob/master/en/device-tapo-c110.md
Btw, feel free to add any information to the wiki that you feel is helpful.

For the wlan driver we have a profile system to set the driver: https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/blob/master/general/overlay/etc/wireless/usb#L94

Please try the following:

fw_setenv wlandev ssw101b-ssc333-tapo-c110
fw_setenv wlanssid SSID
fw_setenv wlanpass Password

[cjdell]

@viktorxda Thanks for that. All working now. Just one more thing. I noticed that only 32MB of RAM is available to Linux and memory is a bit tight. I know this is a 64MB SoC. Is this normal?

[viktorxda]

Yes, some of the ram is assigned to the vendor kernel driver and encoder.

[nikdoof]

I can also report another successful device. Direct flashing via a SOP clip didn't work, but using snander worked perfectly. Connected to the UART and configured the wlandev and the SSID, reboot and everything came up fine.

I didn't try and read out the flash directly after the snander flash to see if it had any differences from the bin, but that might be for the next camera.

On a side note I did direct flash a Tapo C310 with the SSC335 version and it worked out the box with ethernet without any other changes, but I'll commit to the wiki and such for that device.