New version/patch

[b744]

To be released this week between Monday and Wednesday !!
Still got my box sitting useless awaiting this upgrade so I can actually use it. Why is it late because this is starting to get a little tiresome !!!!!
If you'll delay again then please just let us know.
Thanks

[AirNav Support]

Hi b744,

I understand your frustration, as soon as I have news I will pass it on. We have been testing the latest version so it is around however they may have held it back to fix a last minute bug or request.

I should have more news soon. Apologies once again.

[Roadrunner]

Now what a S U P R I S E !!!! I am glad I didn't hold my breath. 

Also, yesterday, in this forum I am sure I read that a problem after 3 hours with the photo upload had been cited as a cause but this morning I can't find any reference to it.  Did someone speak out of turn and then get their message removed ?

If it is down to aircraft searching on the web, Why do we need 2 pictures of each. The amiount of photos collected  in a day by my machine is over 1,000 so before too long my hard drive will be swamped. Surely haveing to search twice is needing more internet time.

I think you need to come clean now, urgently, so that all those people who have spent £479 buying an unreliable device know where they stand. Forget about Network renewal costs for next year - I would rather go without than to spend any more money with Airnav.

[AirNav Support]

Hi Roadrunner,

Once again I apologise for the delay. The post you mention is still there and its being worked on as I type.

We need to be 100% certain that there are no show stoppers in the next release otherwise we will be disappointing you again. Hence that's why we are making sure any serious issues are fully rectified and tested.

I hope to have some further news very soon.

[doro]

Roadrunner, you are not speaking on behalf of me. I cannot imagine that you cannot get it running. I have had it running on serveral machines. It does loose connection now and then and some settings do not work properly, but I'd say 85% of the functionality is okey. Doro ATCbox

[b744]

sadly I'm with roadrunner. Connect to my pc and I get fatal errors so it sits as an expensive paper weight....very expensive as I've not had it running for weeks.
Here's hoping for a cure in the near(ish) future.

[Roadrunner]

Roadrunner, you are not speaking on behalf of me. I cannot imagine that you cannot get it running. I have had it running on serveral machines. It does loose connection now and then and some settings do not work properly, but I'd say 85% of the functionality is okey. Doro ATCbox

I have never spoken on behalf of any one but me.  I have had my radarbox since launch of the device, was one of the first in England to get one. I have spent hours of my time trying to get it to run. I have even taken nearly every program off my laptop (except for wi-fi connectivity and operating systems) and switched off all power management systems and it still crashes. However, I have had SBS! with, four or five add on programs run on the same machine for twenty-four hours without a problem. I have recently connectd it onto my main PC - again a machine that allows SBS1 and loads of programs to run all at the same time with no problem but it crashes within hours of startup with radarbox.

So please do not try and tell me what I can or cannot do with radarbox.  The kit should be robust enough to run on any PC which meets the stated specifications (which mine exceed) without all the hassle I am getting. If you are lucky enough to have got away with no problems then good for you, but as I have said - dont tell me what I should or should not be able to achive.

[AirNav Support]

Hi Roadrunner,

That's exactly what we are trying to do at the moment. The product should be working for everyone without exception.

Obviously there are customers who have had issues and customers which have not had. This is the major reason why its been hard in debugging issues as the bugs only occured in certain conditions.

We are here in making sure that everyone who purchases the product can use it without any trouble. The customers who have issues we are doing everything to rectify it, we apologise its taking a while but we need to make sure we don't give you another version which has the same issues.

Again I apologise profusely.

[Roadrunner]

Hi Roadrunner,

That's exactly what we are trying to do at the moment. The product should be working for everyone without exception.

Obviously there are customers who have had issues and customers which have not had. This is the major reason why its been hard in debugging issues as the bugs only occured in certain conditions.

We are here in making sure that everyone who purchases the product can use it without any trouble. The customers who have issues we are doing everything to rectify it, we apologise its taking a while but we need to make sure we don't give you another version which has the same issues.

Again I apologise profusely.

Thank you for your comments. I am frustrated as much as anything. I have sat with the radar box working and got 5 or 6 hours with no problem and the next day it crashes 4 times in three hours. I have tried it without picture downloads and with with no improvement.   I have wanted to make more use of it but that needs a reliable and stable platform which I have not got.  I want radar box to succeed because to get the same sort of functionality out of my SBS1, I have to run four programs - BaseStation, SBSPolulate, FD3 and SBSPlotter but that is a reliable system.  I am trying not to be all negative as a lot of the facilities on this little black box are great but please sort out the programs so that I can leave it when I take the dog for a walk and come back to see what went into my local airport, rather than as now, coming back to an error message. Keep working on it !

[HH]

Hi all,

I'm testing RB now for some days on different machines with the recent beta software. Installing is easy and never fails, the (software) program works and I have no initial problems either on a laptop nor on desktops.

BUT: Eventually the hardware disconnects, or the whole systems crashes (blue screen) on ALL sytems. I can't reproduce the crashes and it seems it does not have to to with system configuration, system power or software running as the three machines I have tested are very different.

The only thing beyond more or less little software bugs is that it seems there is permitted memory access imho from the ftdi-drivers. Thats the only thing what looks common on the three machines. And exactly this permitted memory allocation could account for the varieties of system crashes or running systems.

As the latest FTDI driver (see: http://www.ftdichip.com/) version is already 2.02.04 and the installed version is only 2.00, this might be a cause? I would be interested to know which ftdi chip (which is responsible for "converting" microcontroller signals to USB signals) is built into the RB.

Markus

[DaveG]

Have to say I am following all the posts, but as I've decided to keep the RB off due to the lockups or hardware disconnects I'm now just waiting and watching rather than getting worked up.

Shame, as I thought you said (AirNav) that the new beta patch (unreleased) had been running for days without issue?

Now going back to watching and waiting :(

[AirNav Support]

We do have it running, we were slowly switching parts of the software back on again. The main concern was the disconnects and stop errors which are now gone.

Once we put the rest on we noticed an issue which was covered up in the past by the disconnects and stop errors. This is what we are now testing and giving the final thumbs up too before releasing.

Unfortanetly software is sometimes a maze when things start to go wrong. Hopefully we now have all the ways out.

[DaveG]

Latest Patch 1 beta 2 news: all the tests are finished but we still have some problems with the photo download routine which causes the entire application to crash after 2 to 3 hours running. We are correcting and testing this and as soon as it is ready the new patch will be out.

Sorry but totally confused now (not hard I know).

I was going off a previous post (above) that stated the issue of crashing was the photo downloading.  So if the crashing has been solved what is the issue with the download of photo's!  or was it a case of two features crashing the program?

Anyway, glad your solving it and do agree best to have it correct before release.  But do you have any indications on how long the fix will take, is it days or weeks?

thanks
Dave

[AirNav Support]

Its day(s) if we do not have another show stopper.

The first stop errors and disconnections was masking the photo crashing hence we do not know about photo issue untill the first issue with the hardware was removed.

[DaveG]

thanks for info.