Hi,

normally I use WiFi Link to access the Spirit unit for all purposes, including updates.
Currently using settings app V 3.6.1 on Mac (Sonoma 14.1.2) I noticed the following while updating to the newest Firmware.

With old Spirit (red and black) aborts are very rare, which always may happen with WiFi.
With Spirit Pro there are often aborts but recovering mostly works at the first try.
With Spirit II upgrading mostly fails and recovering mostly does not work at the first try but after some more trying is mostly does.
With Spirit GT upgrading always aborted and recovering also aborted every time. In this case I had to use the USB cable and recovery worked immediately.

There seems to be a relation to the kind and / or age of Spirit unit.

With older app Versions it also happened, but not so often, maybe there is a timing problem because of growing code?
I wished WiFi Link would work more reliable, because on most of my systems I can not physically access the SYS-Port without disassembling parts.

Regards,
Alexander

Hello,

the problem could happen if more than one device is accessing Wifi-Link module or there is interference with other Wifi.
It could be less rare depending on Spirit unit because firmware size is different. So with some unit it require more time, more data to transfer and so there is more time for possible connection issues. More recent firmwares are bigger than the older ones. But flashing is very same.
We have tested it for thousands of times with both Wifi Link and USB interface, but if connection is really OK it should work.
It could be helpful to set Wifi-Link to AP+Client mode and connect it to your home network. Then connection should be more stable.
So you will be not connecting to 192.168.4.1 but IP address assigned by your network.

Also it could be result of ongoing server maintenance.

_________________
Spirit System developer

Hi,

Interference problems can always happen wth WiFi, I know about that. But old Spirit units almost never have these problems, but Spirit GT always.

I can see that the firmware is downloaded quickly from the server, but when uploading to the unit starts, it is aborted mostly before the progressbar shows up any progress or shortly after it shows up the first little step.

This behavior was seen on both of my Spirit GT.
On Spirit II and Spirit Pro the aborts mostly happen when the progressbar shows 50% or more.

Regards,
Alexander

Yes, this is because Spirit GT and GTR firmware size is approximately 3x bigger (so 3x bigger chance for a possible connection problem)
It retries for several times and if there is no success even after XX times to transfer the data, transmission is stopped.
We checked it right now and before with GT and Wifi-Link under Mac and it works properly for hundreds of times.

You can use command "ping -i 0.2 192.168.4.1" and verify how stable the connection is when doing update.

_________________
Spirit System developer

Hi,

OK, that makes sense and you are right, the ping shows up responsetimes from 1 - 200ms and sometimes a single timeout, which should not be a problem at all.
Odd is that at some point suddenly only timeouts appear, which remains until I move the model a bit. So probably my work bench has to deal with an unknown interfering transmitter.
So I checked the ping to the WiFi Link in Clientmode using my home WiFi. It is very stable with ping responsetimes from 1-10ms and no timeouts.
There are no overlappings of the WiFi channels with my home WiFi, so this seems not be the reason for interrupts when using WiFi Link in AP mode.
Is there a way to change WiFi Channel in AP mode? Currently channel 1 is used, my home WiFi uses ch6 but from the neighborhood there are some more channel 1 ssids active. I would like to use channel 11 for testing.

Using AP mode is much more comfortable as I don't have to deal with diffent IP-Addresses to connect...

Regards,
Alexander

We are working on Wifi-Link firmware where you will be able to change AP Channel. This channel will be used when not connected to any Wifi network.
When using AP+Client mode then channel is always same as network where it is connected due to technical limitations - which is causing interference.

_________________
Spirit System developer

Hi,

that is much appreciated!
If in AP+Clientmode always the channel given by the client mode, it menas that there must have been a change of channel in my home WiFi which is set to automatic. When I checked it, the channels were different.
So probably it might be better to switch the WiFi Link to AP mode only...

Regards,
Alexander