Group Series 500 Skype for Business Online and USB factory restore never ending questions

[Anonymous]

Our Group Series 500 codec from 2017 started flashing red in 2021 and not booting all of a sudden, and I am trying to find out if fixing it would be still worth it.

It was connecting to Skype for Business at Microsoft 365, but Microsoft deprecated some Skype for Business Online services in 2021. Would our Group Series 500 still work with Skype for Business Online like before it broke, or RealConnect is now needed as indicated by few posts I have found here?

Normal factory restore does not work, it starts then flashes red without booting.

After making a USB drive with original 6.1.1 firmware and proper sw_key.txt, the factory restore starts but never ends. I let it run for over 12 hours without any luck. Codec light flashes orange, USB drive light comes on and off periodically, and a connected HDMI screen shows nothing. The box was running 6.1.2 firmware when it broke.

Assuming the codec box is physically broken, are there service manuals with disassembly instructions and schematics available somewhere? The box is now out of warranty and out of service contract.

If not, are our licensing and activation codes transferrable to another (used) box?

Thank you in advance for any words of wisdom, Albin.

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello @AlbinD ,

Welcome to the Poly Community.

Skype for Business online is not the Microsoft 3PIP gateway and from my own understanding the RealConenct for Teams is the way forward.

This is the official Poly community and we can not provide any hobbyist repair instructions or similar.

From the sound of it the unit is faulty and only an RMA would help.

Others can comment but the best and quickest way forward is to contact our Support organization as the community is run by volunteers only.

Please ensure to provide some feedback if this reply has helped you so other users can profit from your experience.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

[Anonymous]

Thank you Stephen, here is the result:

I have contacted Poly Support, they have concluded the box is broken and offered a repair service.

Before sending it over, I opened the box and found a SD card inside broken. 4GB Team Industrial brand, not recognized when plugged into a Windows PC.

I have replaced it with a 32GB SD card and then I was able to recover everything back to normal. For those curious, the SD card gets oddly formatted into 8 partitions during recovery, pictured here:

The sad part is that we will likely scrap everything, or perhaps use it as a webcam with an HDMI capture card. Shadowcast from Genkithings.com could possibly work, Genki claims it pretends to be a webcam.

I cannot seem to even upgrade firmware from 6.1 to 6.2 without spending on a support contract first, and then spending $1,000 per year on an interop service is unlikely approved.

There must be tens of thousands of these boxes installed around, and I was hoping open source community would step in to make them useable a little longer with smaller budgets, but I cannot seem to find anything.

Thank you again for your input, Albin.