Firmware Upgrade Process Gripe
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Don't get me wrong, I love that there is a very active development going, and that some great new features are being added, but it does look like when I look over the messages about attempts issues etc that there is a basic issue of interplay differences between the wifi firmware and main firmware that looks just plain ugly. To whit, it seems like that for every alpha/beta release, the instructions are tweaked just a bit, or have to be retried several times to get it to stick. When it does go to final release, it will be greatly dependent upon what previous release you are coming from on what dead chicken waving procedure you will need to do to get it to work. I do know we are working with advanced hardware that is arguably the best around, but this part just looks plain awful.
I had the opening issue of just purchasing one out of the box from filamentum that had old firmware versions that where seemingly 6 months old. Having to go through the procedure of making sure I waved my hands just right to get it to go right, and also did an upgrade to 1.19beta4 thru a couple of alpha/betas, but i fear for my sanity in trying to track down the correct set of hand waving techniques based upon where I was coming from, especially if you decide to skip some along the path.
Are there plans to make sure that the path is always the same no matter where you are coming from, as I would think the less daring would decide to only hop from major version to major version, and would expect that the transition should always be a smooth one. Yes you may require that they cannot skip major versions, ie 1.18 to 1.20 must have 1.19 major release in middle, but having to go thru the alpha/beta's as a requirement would be verboten. The software for the advanced hardware should be taking care of the headaches to make sure that no matter where you started, you can successfully get to the end point of a standard release, and the procedure should be the same every single time.
#endgrump -
You never need to go through multiple versions when upgrading firmware. The upgrade from 1.18 to 1.19 was more complicated than usual because functions that were previously running on the WiFi module were moved to the main processor so that we have more control over them. This required the interface between the WiFi module and the main processor to be completely rewritten so it wasn't possible to maintain backwards compatibility either way round.
