| “FIRMWARE QUESTION (Re:Wyze Robot Vacuum): I don’t know if the Firmware Team on here is mostly related to cameras, or for any firmware, but I’ll ask anyway. In December, Wyze updated the firmware for Robot Vacuums on the production firmware tract to get multi-floor mapping, spot cleaning, DND, and improved algorithm, etc. It would be nice to hear if there is a new ETA for the firmware merger on the Wyze Robot Vacuum for those who were on the Beta Firmware Tract. We have seen comments posted publicly stating Wyze was preparing behind the scenes for the logistical considerations related to the firmware update potentially requiring small percentage of units needing to be returned for a manual update/correction and Wyze wanted to have that ready to go as smoothly as possible. Is this firmware merger still the plan, and is there an ETA? Why does the firmware upgrade only have problems from some that were on Beta? And if that were the case, couldn’t you just do something like have all the beta firmware update to a firmware that rolls them back to a previous version, then do a second step to update to the same firmware as production? I am sure if it was possible, that’s what you would do (I am not experienced with doing firmware myself, so I am just thinking based on what SEEMS logical). I am curious and asking why it isn’t possible to just roll back to an earlier firmware that would then update successfully to the newest one?” |
Hi! This is Gwendolyn popping in to answer this one since I’m more involved with this process. I hate to say it, but I don’t have a specific ETA. We got almost to the finish line when we were told that the folks we had trained to help with this were no longer likely to be available. Now we’re having to completely set up a new team, do the negotiations, and train them. What’s going on is that the beta builds that some folks were kind enough to test had an issue that made changing away from the firmware currently on the vacuum have a pretty significant, though not guaranteed, brick risk. We spent a bunch of time working on methods to reduce this risk both to help with potential costs and because we know no one wants to have a high risk update. Vacuums fit an important place in people’s lives and we understand this. The firmware that was released to the public didn’t have this problem so we were able to eventually do the update with the extra features. We can’t have the beta folks do an easy change so we wanted to set up a process that would make this as painless as possible for all of you. What’s going to happen when we’re able to get the process stabilized is that we’ll send out an email explaining everything and the fact that the update will actually bring minimal benefit ,especially since we don’t currently plan further Wyze Robot Vacuum firmware updates. Generally, the beta firmware already has the features and fixes on the public firmware. But we made the promise and we intend to keep it. If folks want to do the update, they’ll be able to opt-in and we’ll be sending out the updates in batches so we can keep everything moving smoothly and quickly. Most vacuums will take the update and be okay. But some of them are expected to have trouble. For the vacuums that fail the update, you’ll be able to ship them to us. Your vacuum will be manually repaired by our team. When it’s functioning normally, we’ll send it back to you. All of this will be free of charge. We know that this has been a massive delay. And it’s admittedly pretty frustrating to have been right there about to send the email when we got the halt notice. But we haven’t given up and we’ll get this handled. We’re sorry and appreciate your patience. -u/WyzeCam |