Warning on 2.5 Update

[cborn]

I just installed the v2.5.0 update on Windows (the one where you need to manually download and install due to the new nsis installer)

The software ran up and said it needed to install new firmware on the printer.
Did that, then "Scanning for printers…"
Found the printer, then “Need to install new firmware” again…

and looped around, and around…

I eventually broke it out by closing the UI just when it went into the “Scanning” part of the cycle, ie the firmware had been loaded.
Then power-cycled the printer.

Restarted both, and looks good now.

Perhaps the firmware flashing code isn’t rebooting the printer, so it still reports the old version?

Anyway, something to watch out for.

PS - I spoke too soon! Just tried again (shut down the UI and reopened it), and back to trying to update the firmware again. Looks like a real problem. I’ll leave them both shut down until there is a fix.

[troy]

Hey @cborn, it’s been a while!

Thanks for reporting this. We’ve pulled the intercom message instructing windows users to update and I’m looking into this bug.

Here’s what I know so far:

• we can reproduce here
• The bug is windows only (mac works fine)
• the update loops because we do not see output from the printer — this triggers a the auto-upload feature after 10s.
• the printer/fw appears to reboot properly after the upload complete, because the LEDs start pulsing.
• the app will detect the printer if you connect while it’s running, but does not always connect properly if the printer was connected before launch
• we updated the library we use for serial communication (to address other windows serial bugs)

I suspect the problem is that we are not closing the connection properly and/or we missed something related to data processing when updating the serial library (e.g. there’s some code that cleans up leftover characters in the serial buffers… wonder if that’s not completing). Those are just my suspicions, I need to dig in to see what’s happening.

In the meantime, we’ve decided not to pull the release because:

• mac is fine
• there is at least one work around for Windows users — 2 in this case: win users can downgrade to 2.4.0 (and it will not re-update) OR they can use 2.5.0 knowing that they need to connect the printer after starting the app.

I’d recommend downgrading while we work on the fix:
https://github.com/VolteraInc/styx/releases/download/v2.4.0/Voltera-win-2.4.0.exe

Thanks again for reporting and for the details!

[troy]

Update: I found the problem.
The new version of the library we use does not reset the printer on connect, on Windows. I’ve now added code to the connect sequence to explicit reset the printer (on win and mac).

Other things:

• The reset is achieved by toggling the RTS line, and is the same code used by the e-stop button.
• the printer was resetting after upload (see my reboot/LEDs comment in my first post). It would then output its start up messages (all normal). A few seconds later, the app would connect, having missed those messages, including the firmware version – 10 seconds later we trigger a firmware upload (a feature that is intended to fix corrupted/missing firmware).

What’s next?
There are some smaller bugs I’d like to fix before rolling this out. We’ll start release testing Monday

Thanks again for reporting!

[cborn]

I just upgraded to 2.6.0, looking good.

Thanks guys!