My students always ask me why brand new Digi’s devices ship with obsolete firmware. For example the I/O functions have been out for at least two years, but XBee 802.15.4 radios purchased last month still don’t support I/O without a firmware upgrade.
Any ideas on what the deal is?
Good question, and i’m not sure i have a good answer but it is a truthful one. Product Management’s focus this past year has been to release a lot of new products, and this came intentionally at the cost of not keeping our older products as up-to-date as we’d like. We are in the process of updating our XBee ZNet 2.5 modules to the latest firmware 1x47, next up is the XBee and XBee-PRO 802.15.4 modules to 1xEx, planning to do it this quarter.
I should mention the 802.15.4 modules are still an excellent and very popular product; it’s just unfortunate we make customers load the latest firmware after they receive brand new modules. We’re working to rectify this. Thank you for using our modules and sharing comments in this forum.