Tag Archives: Reciva Tokens

“Reciva Gateway not responding”

140 Replies

Many thanks to a number of SWLing Post readers who’ve informed me that their Reciva-based WiFi radios may be on their last legs.

I’ve gotten a number of messages from WiFi radio owners who note that when they try to tune to a WiFi radio station, their radio now displays the following message:

“Reciva Gateway not responding”

Reciva originally announced that their services would close permanently on January 31, 2021. That date was then pushed out to April 30, 2021, after pressure from WiFi radio manufactures like C.Crane and Grace Audio.

April 30th came and went, though, and there was no change. Many here have been commenting since that date feeling pretty happy their radios were still working.

It appears that at some point on September 13th or 14th, 2021, the service finally shut down.

Many WiFi radio owners performed a hack on their radios which essentially circumventing the Reciva aggregator before the announced closure on April 30, 2021. Later, we learned that radios with Reciva chips might require a periodic token refresh to keep the radio functioning properly. Contacts within the industry confirmed the use of a token system, however no one verified that it would effectively brick-up a radio post-Reciva.

SWLing Post contributor, Mark, wrote this morning noting that he had not completed the Reciva server workaround and had received the “Reciva Gateway not responding” message. He added:

After playing around with my CCWiFi2 I’m noticing odd behavior now that the Reciva Gateway is down.

The volume control is much slower to respond to volume setting changes as compared to normal. Additionally, and more importantly, it seems the presets might re-assign themselves to different buttons; I have lost two of them already.

I think it wise to operate the radio slowly and carefully. It might be best to avoid making quick preset selections and wait for the preset to load completely until another preset is selected.

Generally, the radio seems to be operating slower than normal; that’s the feeling I am having with mine.

Thanks for the feedback, Mark.

Reciva radio owners: please share your experience here in the comments section.

We’re particularly interested if those who performed the Reciva server workaround are still able to use their radios moving forward.

Spread the radio love

Do Reciva WiFi radios use a token system? Let’s prove or disprove this now.

14 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Rob Gray, who recently reached out with some potentially concerning information about Reciva radios.

Evidently, some users are claiming that Reciva chips require a periodic token refresh to keep the radio functioning properly.

Rob writes:

From this internet radio forum a contributor wrote:

“Apparently, even stations with URLs stored locally on the radios as presets, will eventually stop working.  The Reciva chips require a token to be renewed periodically from the Reciva server;  once the server is turned off, the token can no longer be renewed, and the radio becomes a dead parrot.  Apparently Reciva did this to prevent their chips from being pirated.”

Another contributor wrote:

“….when I asked Grace about it, their reply was that while the presets would work for a time, eventually even that function won’t work because the radios require a token to be renewed periodically from a Reciva server.  If the server is gone and the token can’t be renewed, the radio becomes a doorstop.  It wasn’t clear how long the radio will work…”

I don’t know if this is true or not (time will quickly show), but when I asked C.Crane about this a while back, they seemed aware of the possibility and their experts gave it a 50/50% chance of success/failure based on tokens.

Speaking with a very knowledgeable friend on the topic, he has described that the real, ultimate way to tackle this problem is to have a ‘packet sniffer’ and monitor all the traffic in/out of the network to understand what data is being used (like if there is a token for example) and reverse engineer what Reciva is doing.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Rob.

Tokens: Can someone prove or disprove this?

There are some savvy programmers, network specialists, developers, and hackers in the SWLing Post community. My hope is that someone can use a packet sniffer or similar device to determine if this is true or not. Since the Reciva service will close down by the end of the month, time is of the essence.

My hope is that if there is a token, it won’t shut down functionality to a point that we can’t stream from our own IIS or perhaps the token can be reverse-engineered. Or maybe there is no token at all, or if there is it will have no impact on usability after the Reciva service has closed.

Please comment and/or reach out to me with any evidence.  I’d like to clear this up with some facts. Many thanks in advance!

Spread the radio love