During a recent roll out of Polycom devices, including the trusty VVX600, I ran into an issue where a particular Polycom Visual+ unit that was connected to a Polycom Trio 8800 would get stuck in a kind of reboot cycle. The device would power on, boot, display info on the screen and then everything would go blank and the device would restart itself.
Power
It’s no secret that the Trio 8800 and Visual+ unit are power-hungry devices. Polycom recommend using either PoE+ (Not just your regular PoE), or a separate PoE injector to ensure both devices are getting the power they demand.
At first, I thought that the device may not be getting enough power. This was quickly dismissed though as connecting the Visual+ unit to a power injector didn’t solve the issue
Networking
Both the Visual+ and 8800 units have certain requirements when it comes to the underlying network infrastructure. Most importantly, the devices need IP addresses. This was quickly confirmed visually as the IP address of the Visual+ unit was displayed on the TV prior to the device rebooting.
USB Camera
The Visual+ unit comes with a Logitech webcam that provides the video conferencing capabilities for the Trio 8800. The webcam comes pre-configured for the Visual+ unit, and all that is required is to connect the webcam via USB to the Visual+ unit.
I noticed that the Visual+ unit would boot and stay online up until the moment I connected the USB webcam to the back of the device. The moment I did this, the Visual+ unit would reboot over and over.
Firmware & Solution
Out of the box the Visual+ and Trio 8800 came with an outdated (but supported!) firmware version 5.4.4. I suspected that the firmware on the Visual+ unit was somehow corrupt or faulty and for what ever reason, couldn’t load the drivers for the camera.
The solution? As simple as unplugging the USB camera, downloading and installing the latest firmware for the Trio 8800 and Visual+ unit, rebooting the devices and re-connecting the USB camera.