We have discovered an issue, this week, that affects a number of RAK Hotspot Miners shipped by Cal-Chip to customers starting January 2021 until today (the "Dolphin" batch, up to order #2999). This issue is the same as November’s discovery.
This issue affects approximately 20% of RAK Hotspot Miners shipped between January 2021 and today (including the Dolphin batch).
Similar to the issue found in November 2020, the RAK Hotspot Miner is unable to update to the latest firmware image because of a floating pin, which causes the Hotspot to believe the reset button is being pressed. This prevents the Hotspot from running the latest firmware update and cannot sync. We fixed the issue when found but it was not adapted on the manufacturing line by the RAKwireless team.
If your RAK Hotspot Miner is affected, these are the likely symptoms:
- It will be stuck on a firmware image from December 2020
- It cannot sync/stuck syncing
- It will not mine
RAK Hotspot Miners with this issue will typically fix itself after two OTA cycles, but in the event it doesn’t, the Helium team is taking the following steps:
- RAKwireless will no longer use the old firmware image from December 2020
- Cal-Chip will make sure the latest firmware is flashed on SD cards before shipping to customers. This will include the current "Dolphin" batch (order #3000 onward) and future batches starting with "Eagle".
- Helium will create a script to check the batch of on-chain RAK Hotspot Miners to make sure it has the latest image. If it doesn’t, then it will perform a fix to make sure it has the latest image. This script will only run if the Hotspot is powered on and connected to the internet.
This does not affect:
- Helium Hotspots
- RAK Hotspot Miners shipped before January 2021
- RAK Hotspot Miners shipped after March 17 2021
- Nebra, Syncrob.it, or Bobcat Hotspots