IPSC System - Upgrading repeater firmware.

[thassler]

We have a nine repeater IP Site Connect system. Six are MTR3000's and the remainder are XPR8400's. We would like to get each repeater up to the latest firmware. They all should be running 1.09.02 right now. There are approximately 450 subscriber units which consist of XPR4550 mobiles and XPR6550 portables. The firmware for the subscriber units range from 1.08.xx to the latest.
Does anyone know of any problems we should be aware of before upgrading the repeaters. The plan would be to upgrade the repeaters and then gradually upgrade the mobiles and portables. Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[com501]

I seem to recall some sort of loss of connectivity during a firmware upgrade a while back, but I don't remember the details. You should look on this site and read the release notes for each version before you start, and also peruse the current system planner for any other notes. Some things have changed in the codeplug setup, but thing too drastic. As always, the MASTER is done last. Hopefully you can do these all remotely. READ and WRITE to each repeater and archive the codeplug for each BEFORE you start, just to make sure everything works!!

 

[WB4JGI]

I was able to upgrade my MTR3000 remotely from version 2.30.xx to version 2.40.00 with no issues.

However it didn't want to be upgraded to version 2.40.12 remotely. It would fail out every time and the repeater would get hung up and eventually would reboot after 3 minutes and radio traffic could resume. That's another thing, during an upgrade or attempted upgrade, the repeater disables itself for up to 3 minutes while the file is being transferred and applied.

I wish these were setup like the GTR8000 radios. So that we could transfer only the new firmware, and then install it at a later time.

Wishful thinking, I suppose.

Anyways, I thought I'd share my experience with remote upgrades.

 

[thassler]

Appreciate the input so far, thanks...