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EasyN WiFi Camera Firmware Upgrade

I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my EasyN WiFi camera.  I just like to keep my firmware up to date.  I am sure it is a security sieve no matter what firmware I have on it.

Of course, the EasyN web site is apparently dead.  EasyN was just a brand slapped on many devices.  So I went to another brand that looked like it once sold the same camera - Foscam.  And their lame, broken, and apparently deprecated web site seemed to offer firmware that might be compatible.

In general, these anonymously made cheap internet devices are an unholy mixture of cheap manufacturing and abysmal, dangerously insecure software with no promises of any kind of quality.  Still, they have been extraordinarily inexpensive. The manufacturers would sell a lot more cameras if they merely open-sourced the entire software side of it.  But I digress.

So Internet lore told me that I could jam the Foscam firmware on this thing, as long as the middle two numbers of the version number were the same.  So my version number of my EasyN was 4.37.2.43, and so as long as I found wifi cam firmware with a version number in the form of X.37.2.Y, where Y is greater than 43, I'd be upgrading.  Nice!  That same Internet myth said that the first digit was the vendor (with "4" being, apparently, EasyN, and "11" being Foscam).

I went to the Foscam web site and managed to find nothing, but a deeper digging through Google helped me find firmware called "11.37.2.65", which is evidently 22 versions newer than what I had on my camera.  And then I proceeded to follow the upgrade docs.

There are two firmware components: the system and the UI.  You update them independently.  So I followed the procedure and upgrade the system firmware first.  That seemed to work, but when I'm done it is clear that the old UI firmware doesn't work with the new system.  Hm.  So I get this "firmware error" message and I think I've just pretty much ruined the camera.  After all, I'm going to throw it out before going through any laborious process to de-brick it.

It turns out that the upgrade process is an unholy mess.   You can't mix and match the System and UI firmware or else you could brick things.  But there is no way to upgrade without a little mix and match.

Then I get the great idea that maybe I can get the UI firmware update page to reload.  After all, the camera is apparently booting and connecting to my WiFi network, so something is really working there.  And so then I manage to rediscover the UI update page in all it's mis-spelled glory:     http://192.168.x.x/maintance.htm

So I update the UI firmware, and get more errors: "NaN" and other weirdness appears on a sparse page.  Bummer.  But I am smart enough to wait, assuming that a firmware update it actually cranking away in the background.  And a few minutes later, the Foscam UI appears.  I guess I was right.

But then the camera still seems totally broken, with lots of errors and crashing of the UI.  So the final smart idea was to do a hard reset via that magic push button on the bottom of the camera.  After that, a newer and likely just as insecure and unstable UI appears, and my dangerous risky-cam is back in action, ready for network compromise.

And there you have it.  That's how you waste an hour updating a junky wifi cam with anonymously produced firmware.

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