SMX2200HV Firmware update failure and recovery

[CdeJonge]

Just posting this since I could not find similar solutions online and I hope that someone who finds themselves in the same situation can use this information to hopefully fix their machine.

Recently we had to replace the battery pack in our SMX2200HV unit, so we planned a maintenance window for this and I thought it would be a great opportunity to get all the firmware up to date. Especially since we had not updated anything since first installment. We manage the device over a network management card 3 and the process seemed pretty straightforward. 

• Power off the outlet groups.
• Upload the firmware file to the management card and let it do the update.
• Restore power to the outlet groups.

Sadly things did not go according to plan. Met with a "Firmware Update in Progress" screen.

And the NMC not registering any connected UPS anymore and also rebooting every 2-3min or so I feared the worst.

Looking at resources online like:

• SMX3000HV stuck in reboot loop firmware update in progress 
• How do I update the firmware using the Firmware Upgrade Wizard? 

I tried to update the firmware this way. Sadly the wizard failed to make a connection using the serial connection and the readme file specifically states: 

1. USB upgrade not supported in SMTSMX20 and SMX1003.Please try with Serial Cable that comes with the UPS

 Using Putty to connect over serial gave me a blank screen that did not seem to respond to any input as well.
After triple checking the 940-0625A cable was indeed correct this blank screen did not fill me with hope.  

Reading and viewing some more resources:

• unbricking an apc smt3000 ups after a failed firmware update 
• Enabling the Smart interface on an APC SMT2200I 
• Finding the hidden Smart protocol in an APC SMT2200 

This made me think I would have to re-flash the chip with a ST-Link adapter using an image captured from a second unit we have. Pending the arrival of the hardware to do so I wanted to make sure the COM port on my computer was actually not receiving any data.
So I installed the trail version of Serial Port Monitor and at first did not get any output that I could interpret. The default view is almost like a wireshark pcap, so I would recommend using the terminal view. SPM checks if any other programs are using the serial port when you start a capture, the easiest way to make it work is to disable the COM port in device manager and re-enable it.
I disconnected the front panel from the main board since in the YouTube vids it seemed to influence the behavior of the serial connection. And got Extra Putty installed since I would need the XModem function to upload the firmware file as per the SMT3000 unbrick guide.

Wanting to see if I could get any output like UPS-Link I fired up a SPM capture. But since the trail does not allow you to send commands, I opened up ExtraPutty to see if I would get any response to sending a "Y".
The "Y" did not display but instead I was getting something shown else:

Ok, progress. It seems the download manager is active, but it does not have the firmware file from the NMC. It sends a "C" ever few seconds then when it has 20 of them the UPS reboots and starts again with the download manager info.

At this point I must admit I did a bit of a "Hail Mary" and just used File Transfer --> XModem --> Send and pushed the 15.0 firmware file I had. When after a minute or 2 the UPS still had not rebooted I began to feel a little bit more at ease. After about 10 minutes the upload was done and the UPS rebooted, I heard some of the relays click and it worked again.