I have been using ConnectME -C for a while now and I have got through a number of modules as a result of the FTP upload of code failing.
More often than not the upload fails after the FTP session is quit and the unit is re-programming itself (it will hang and never reboot into new code).
I’ve also had a couple of units that failed after using TFTP recovery mode - ConnectME gets image.bin from TFTP and resets but both LEDS stay on solid. These two units seem to be in a state where they cannot be recovered.
I was wondering if there are any known causes of these types of failures? (there seem to be a few posts on the forums from other people with similar issues)
In-field upgrading is a highly desirable feature for me but I also need confidence that the failure rate when uploading firmware is not too high!
I have also had some problems with the FTP interface on new modules.
With the later versions of NetOS using ESP the standard New Project wizard creates an outline application that allows firmware upgrade via the Web server.
Overall I seem to find that this is a much more reliable means of upgrading the firmware than the FTP interface. I have no idea why this should be, but since we have started using this I have had minimal failures.
The major worry now is initially programming new modules that only support FTP.
We’ve had a few problems with initial load, which so far I’ve put down to teething problems in getting the procedure right for the technician doing it.
So far we’ve not had an unrecoverable module (although not always strictly cost-effective to do so, because of the time it takes).
The option to recover via XModem on the serial port is particularly useful, since it saves the bother of setting up the tftp server and so on.
Once configured we virtually always use the web-based upload, which seems to work well.