Bricked(?) Aeros

Ended up getting a loop studio because it seemed like a great looper and I enjoyed my beatbuddy. Seems that I got a bad unit. Going to attempt to get some help from SS with actually getting it working, but with a 2 day turnaround time on emails I imagine I should start working on the assumption that the unit is in fact bad and start finding out how to get a return/refund, because these things are too damn expensive to just shrug off a bad purchase.

The first Aeros that I bought had a bad SD card port. I sent it back and had it replaced, although that put a bad taste in my mouth. I’m glad I did. Makes a huge difference once you can actually start using the unit. Definitely some ups and some downs, but well worth it imho.

What are the symptoms? Perhaps another user that has had the same experience can share their solution.

Got a refurb unit (usually find refurbs to be well tested and not run into problems but LOL WHOOPS) running 3.1.8 firmware. Did an SD card update to 4.1.5, and the unit stopped turning on aside for the blue LED underneath. Managed to get it to load the 3.1.8 firmware back on with an SD card, and this time did a wifi firmware update. Actually went through, unit turned back on after the update. Was tired after fighting with the thing for 2 hours though so didn’t actually do anything with it, just was happy to have gotten it working before I go to bed.

Decide to actually play with the unit over lunch today and as a happy surprise it no longer turned on aside for the blue LED, but now I’m not even able to get 3.1.8 back on it. Just… an expensive black box.

Only thing I can think of is to try swapping your BeatBuddy (BB) pedal PSU with your AEROS and to see if that makes any difference.

Hey there,

I’m sorry to hear you had trouble, sometimes the Aeros can get bricked while updating if say there is a power surge/SD card is moved or locked/ etc. The initial failure may have been a problem with SD or possibly the SD slot or what I mentioned above. Luckily we have a mirrored image in the unit to avoid total bricking but maybe something went wrong elsewhere in this case. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Were you able to use the SD card at all afterwards? Is it a 32GB max FAT32 formatted SD card?

I will say the Aeros does take quite a few seconds to start up, since you may not be used to it just yet, I will ask, is it taking longer than say 10-15 seconds after switching it on for your screen to light up? Just to verify because next step is time consuming to fix a potentially bricked unit.

If it is not turning on, I would have you do a hard wipe with the s2 button. If you can confirm that there is a definite issue, you could follow these instructions:

Here is a tutorial video on how to do this:

NOTE: If the serial number of your unit (located at the bottom) is above 100 after the dash (e.g. SN:0035-135 is above 100 but SN:0035-0057 is not), once the bottom plate is removed as shown in the video (0:00 - 0:15) you can skip to 2:40 where the button (the “S2 button”) that needs to be pressed is shown, as that button on your unit will be right on the bottom of the board, and the bottom will not need to be removed as shown in the video.

Here is the file to flash to the SD card, referenced in the video (updated to version 3.0): https://1drv.ms/u/s!AloaYGf01ky-h-c2-TnQLRgC31bUXA?e=w7iduv

Flashing software (Windows only): Win32 Disk Imager download | SourceForge.net

Flashing software (Windows/Mac): balenaEtcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives

This should hopefully fix the issue. Please let me and/or support know if it does not. Thank you.

If you would like to wait for some step by step guidance by support, or you would prefer to try to initiate a return, you could wait on their response by email.

Our customer service might be a bit slower than normal for this week and we again do apologize for any inconvenience there, but we’ll take care of you ASAP, most likely early next week.

Thank you for your patience!

No luck with the reset either. Support suggested the same thing and I let them know it didn’t help. Will see where it goes I guess.