Firmware upgrade for Unidata WPU-7700 phone

As there are scant data found on the web on how to configure this phone, hopefully this write-up will provide more help for those searching for such data.

Only recently, a few weeks ago, the udcsystems.com started making firmware download available for this WPU-7700 phone. The documentation for Administrator should be downloaded too and the data below will try to fill in the remaining gaps on the topic of upgrading the firmware on the phone. The latest firmware is 2.7 while my Unidata phone was on 2.4.

  1. On the Unidata phone, verify the current version of the current firmware with Menu > Settings > My Phone Info.

  2. Have tftp running on a server, preferably your Asterisk server as we know for sure that the phone has no problem reaching it. The tftp normally uses the /tftpboot folder for download/upload. On my Asterisk CentOS 5.3 server it is run with
    /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /tftpboot

  3. Download the firmware wpu7700-common-20090917-02-07-00.zip from udcsystems.com. Rename it to /tftpboot/fw.zip. I changed to a short name to avoid having to thumb a complicated string from the Unidata keyboard.

  4. Ensure your Unidata phone has sufficient battery charge to run for a long time. On the Unidata phone activate the download with Menu > Settings > Admin Menu (the default password is 000000) > Firmware upgrade. Select TFTP, put in the IP address of your tftp server, and the fw.zip filename. The download takes about 5 minutes, it goes through the stages of “Updating…” then “Saving…” of the 4 files which are inside the fw.zip file. Then the phone automatically reboots.

That’s all. Verify that the firmware is now 2.7 under Menu > Settings > My Phone Info.

Unfortunately this new firmware upgrade had not fully corrected the bad English in some of the prompts or info messages, for example “It is not registered phone number” means that your phone contacts list is empty. :smile: This is a minor point as on the other hand this is a fantastic phone for roaming, it can go seamlessly from AP to AP without dropping a syllable and its display is way more advanced than other Wi-Fi phones that I have tested: Linksys WIP330, D-Link DPH-540, SpectraLink 8002. Its keyboard is more responsive too.

Other tips:

A. To access through the Web browser your Unidata phone which has the IP of 192.168.0.100 for example, on the phone go to Menu > Settings > Security (default password is 0000) > Lock PC Sync > ENABLE then define a password. From the Asterisk server browse to 192.168.0.100:8080 and in the logon screen put in that password to access the phone. This Web access allows you to manage the phone contacts which is a lot easier from the browser than by typing from the phone keyboard. It also allows you to upload or download list of contacts in CSV (comma separated values) format.

B. This phone keeps losing time after rebooting. Your Asterisk server can be run as a time server with “service ntpd start” and the phone set up to read the time from it. Go to Menu > Settings > Time > Time Server and put in the IP address of your Asterisk server. Then go to Current time and click on START, Set. Ensure the same time zone is used on the phone and on the Asterisk server. Reboot the phone to force it to synchronize right away, otherwise it should synchronize within a few minutes.

C. Avoid putting in good-quality long passphrase with blank space for the encryption. The menu on the phone doesn’t have an option to reveal the text or word wrap to the next line (therefore the extra characters exceeding the 20-character screen length just pile up when reaching the right hand side of the screen) and the blank space is not easy to produce so you may end up with frustrating multiple re-entries before the encryption could be set up with your AP.