I cannot get the Melody Smart app to work correctly with the BC118 when trying to upgrade the firmware on the chip. Trying to go from melody smart v3.4 to 3.5 . Both the Android and iOs versions of the MS app find the chip, but the Android gives an error regarding a “null object reference” and the iOs app lets me select the option to upgrade the firmware, but then just hangs and never returns the available firmware versions to pick from. Seems to be an issue with the app or the Sierra Wireless servers. Anyone have similar issue and know how to fix?
Hi @PE_Prod
Sierra is aware of this issue.
Please contact your distributor or submit “Contact Us” on Sierrawireless.com for technical support.
@Donald Not sure how to translate that response. I actually do have a ticket opened with technical support (case: 00994321… opened up after I posted on forum to see if anyone else was aware of problem). Does this mean they are aware of the problem, but aren’t going to address it??
So to give a bit more information around this. The BC118 is a very old product which was originally part of a company that Sierra bought. Over the years the knowledge and infrastructure around the product has reduced and fallen over.
As a result, quite some time ago, the server where the firmware was stored and that was used by the app became non functional, it was not possible to bring it back up again especially given the number of applications that were using it, meaning that the only way to update the firmware now is locally.
Its not that the ‘workload is to big’ its that there is no technical way to get it up and running again. The app is now only useful to demonstrate connectivity between a smart phone and the BC118.
Regards
Matt
@mlw I am well aware of the history of this part, as this isn’t the first problem we’ve had with it. We were able to upgrade firmware via the app as recently as July 2020 . But the server became nonfunctional prior to then? How does one go about having firmware updated “locally”? We need to support this on a legacy product on a final build of 100 pcs. Is there a way we could be provided with the 3.5 version of the firmware and upgrade them locally at our facility?
So it might have been that you had a device that had the firmware you wanted previously downloaded to it? Certainly for me it has not worked for quite some time.
The interface that is used to update the unit with locally is the SPI interface (so depends if you have access to this), this has to use a CSR chip to work with it, you can buy these from Digikey at the link below.
https://www.digikey.co.uk/products/en/development-boards-kits-programmers/programmers-emulators-and-debuggers/799?k=CSR%20spi
After that you need to use a flashing program along with the .img file for 3.5 which I will message to you.
Regards
Matt