G5 Panel lockups
Duncan Ellis
Posts: 162
in AMX Hardware
Am I the only person who is experiencing lockups using one of the new G5 20" panels?
Bizarre thing is, you can see button pushes and the code sending commands to the panel but the panel freezes, then probably 10 minutes later it will process all of the pushes in one go....................................
Bizarre thing is, you can see button pushes and the code sending commands to the panel but the panel freezes, then probably 10 minutes later it will process all of the pushes in one go....................................
0
Comments
The panel I used had the original release firmware, 1.0.8 I think.
I tried to update the firmware and it failed, I gave up really quickly though because I had visions of bricking my first MXT-2001 as tends to happen with the first ever firmware update on products, so decided it was an SEP and moved on.
Here are some notes regarding the recovery mode:
If a device does not boot up all the way or part of the disk is corrupted, re-installing firmware may resolve the issue. However, if the device does not boot far enough to connect to a master or the user cannot launch Settings to do normal firmware upgrade, they can use the emergency recovery method to install Firmware or do a Factory Data Reset.
1) Power up the device while holding the Sleep/Settings/Power hard button
2) Release the button 3 seconds after seeing the AMX boot logo
3) Wait a few seconds for recovery mode to begin.
4) The text screen titled "AMX system recovery" will come up. The user is presented with 4 options:
• Reboot Device
• Factory Data Reset
• Revert to Factory Firmware
• Install Firmware from USB
5) Navigate the menu options by pressing the Power button. To select an item long press the Power button for 2 or more seconds. In addition, if the device has a USB keyboard plugged in (at bootup), the user can use up/down arrow and Enter keys to navigate the menus.
6) If the user selects "Reboot Device", the device will reboot.
7) If the user selects "Factory Data Reset" and selects "Yes" on the confirmation screen, the system will erase all of the user data (settings, app data, user pages).
8) If the user selects "Revert to Factory Firmware" and selects "Yes" on the confirmation screen, the system will extract the factory firmware (this can take a minute) and then automatically initiate a firmware upgrade as usual.
9) If the user selects "Install Firmware from USB", a new menu will come up where the user can navigate the files on the USB drive:
• Selecting the "../" entry will take the user back to the previous directory
• Entries with a trailing "/" on the name are directories. Selecting a directory will bring up a new menu with the contents of that directory shown.
• All other entries will be ".kit" files. Selecting a KIT file and selecting "Yes" on the confirmation screen will extract the firmware (this can take a minute) and then automatically initiate a firmware upgrade as usual.
It's all well and good you are releasing a "more stable" version in mid August, and you have an ongoing commitment to keep the project updated. But customers are spending thousands of dollars on these products, and tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands on the entire system. It is not acceptable for anything to be released *at all* if it's not perfectly stable in 99% of circumstances. Customers don't want to be your beta testers. Dealers don't want to be your beta testers, unless it's software, and we signed up for that. Product needs to be complete and useable when it ships. Small bugs and little things, that's OK to deal with after a release, but not issues that make the product unusable, or even mildly unreliable. When the 4" Modero X panels were released, I had a shipment of about a half dozen, and every single one of them had to go back with a hardware error that cause them to detect button presses that weren't happening. The house was unoccupied during construction, and I would arrive in the morning and the music would be on. You guys fixed it promptly, but I would have been in deep doo-doo if the client had moved in the house already and stuff was going on and off by itself in the middle of the night. That was our last big AMX job, and it was three years ago. I'm in maintenance mode for AMX. And it's because we can't rely on your new products to actually work when they ship.
Amen. I've raised it directly with our local representatives as well; AMX products are being released to market far too early.
They're being put in front of consultants while they're still vapourware who get excited and hard spec them into projects, and then we have to pick up the pieces when they a) ship later than the consultants are told will be the case and b) don't work reliably out of the box when they do ship.
I know there are commercial pressures surrounding time to market, but what cost is placed on previously loyal customers abandoning your products because they are perceived to be unreliable?
I'm not being overly harsh here. It has been my experience that every_single_product released by AMX over the last 5 years which I have used within 3 months of it being available locally (which in theory is several months after being released in the US) has not worked reliably. This costs us money and damages the reputation of our company (somewhat unjustly) and AMX as the manufacturer. (Fool us once shame on you, fool us on an ongoing basis - why are we stuck dealing with these product issues?).
I sincerely hope that the new ownership places more focus on QA before new products start shipping. As it stands there is a stigma attached to AMX products which makes it hard to put them forward for upcoming projects.
It seems as though there is a blockage in some internal message queue in the panel, which unblocks itself several minutes later. I presume the "online heartbeat" between the panel and master is still okay, otherwise the panel would drop offline. We log all TP offline events in both RMS3 and an in-house logging system, and there are no such events getting logged.
In our case some of the queued up messages are "stop" button pushes for our automated recording system. We have had several instances where the TP has queued this message up at the end of a lecture, then a timetable changeover has occurred. The automated recording system has started a new recording for lecture #2, then the "stop" comes through from the TP and terminates the new recording a few minutes into lecture #2. I'm sure our paying customers (both on-campus and online students) are not too happy about this.
I've submitted a bug report for this. Now I'm going to dig out our old G4 panels (CV7/700vi/700i) and prep them for rolling back from the ModeroX. The current situation is unfair on our customers.
Roger McLean
Swinburne University