When there is a firmware update available, opening the app brings up a dialog saying it’s available.
Let’s say I make the selection to update the firmware. What happens then? By that, I mean what are all the steps that happen, and what devices are involved in each phase of the process?
The hub will get new firmware, and after that, you can go into each valve you own and update the firmware for the valve. You should only have to update firmware one time.
That’s interesting, because that’s not been my perception thus far.
My experiences led me to believe something different was happening: that it was almost as though my phone were doing the sending to the timer valve directly.
Over the past several weeks, I have been prompted to update the valve firmware more than once. Each time it succeeds. Each time it never shows as an update being available for the valve - I have to wander in to look at the valve to trigger it, and even then it seems I can only trigger one of these “events” per time through.
I’ve never found that I can update another valve once one states it can be upgraded and I choose to do so.
I have one hub with four hose valves attached to it.
Additionally, one thing that really makes absolutely no sense to me is tying up my phone for this process. This is an automated watering system. Were it all working properly, I should ideally never go into the app at all. People don’t add new valves every week. People don’t change watering times every week. Hopefully, the software is such that one is never going in to manually water something every week. As such, the only time I open the app is when I want / need to do something, and I need to do it now while I’m thinking about it!
Instead, I’m prompted to update a valve firmware. If I say to do so, my phone is tied up for ten minutes. (In fact, have your app set so that it doesn’t eat at the battery if it’s in background, and I’m not even convinced it will even progress further if I want to do anything at all with my phone other than update the valve firmware!) Shocking as it may seem, I purchased my phone to do other things in addition to controlling my irrigation and making sure its components are kept up to date.
To me, this is one more strange behavior that comes from the fact the hose timer hub itself does not come off as a first class entity. It’s reflected in the UI, and it’s reflected in items such as this. There is new valve firmware available. I ought to be able to see my hub - not the timers - in the app UI, tell the hub to download the firmware, and then let it update all of the hose valves. If it wants to do them one at a time, that’s fine. If it needs to look at schedules and work around one of them running, that’s a good thing. But the hub should have enough utility to it that all of this is managed there, and I should be able to go back and review the hub’s accomplishments, not be forced to watch a progress bar go by - for only one of the valves.
This whole hub / hose valve thing seems to have a lot of holes in it that make the solution not whole. This definitely seems like one of those places it’s making me work too hard for its benefit, not it working hard for mine.
Thank you for all the feedback.
Fortunately, it looks like your hub and valves are all updated with the latest firmware. We do not plan on doing additional firmware releases so this should be a one time issue that you had to deal with.