Makerbot Replicator 5th gen Firmware update hangs / stuck

[Sascha Willems]

Hello there,

we recently got one of the 5th Replicators at work, and we're informed of a new firmware update by our german distributor, afair it was 1.1.018.

But now the printer is stuck on the firmware update process for over three hours now (still telling us it takes 15 or more minutes ;) ), and doesn't seem to advance at all. Makerbot Desktop only shows the printer as being "busy", but nothing happens anymore.

Any ideas? Is it safe to turn off the printer, or will that result in a defective firmware?

P.S. : Our first firmware flash after unpacking the replicator last week went without a hitch.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Let it run all day if you have to. It's a slow process.

Makerbot is not known for the accuracy of their progress bars :-)

[Dan Newman]

On 26/03/2014, 5:04 AM, Sascha Willems wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> we recently got one of the 5th Replicators at work, and we're informed of a
> new firmware update by our german distributor, afair it was 1.1.018.
>
> But now the printer is stuck on the firmware update process for over three
> hours now (still telling us it takes 15 or more minutes ;) ), and doesn't
> seem to advance at all. Makerbot Desktop only shows the printer as being
> "busy", but nothing happens anymore.
>
> Any ideas? Is it safe to turn off the printer, or will that result in a
> defective firmware?

I don't think anyone here knows the answer to that one yet. (And I've
unpacked the root file system in the firmware downloads and looked through
it some even.) Generally speaking these ARM9 boards are difficult to "brick".
Typically you can build a SD card with the appropriate root file system, find
the magic boot from SD card control on the board, and fix things up by booting
from the SD card. But you have to then know what exact build of TI Angstrom to use to
accomplish that and for that info you would need help from Makerbot.

In short, you're going to have to have your distributor ask Makerbot. I would
hope that they made the download interruptible: otherwise, you'd have to
worry about a power outage bricking your bot.

Dan

[Stefan Eisermann]

Same here. I already tried it out: Reboot is safe.

I'll give it a last try and see whats happening over night...maybe it's a really slooow process... :/

[Sascha Willems]

So it looks we're not alone. I've spoken to our german makerbot distributor and the technician told me to have the update continue till tomorrow morning. When I left work it was already running for almost 9h, though the technician said that their update of the 5th Gen Replicator only took about an hour.

Too bad if you just got a brand new toy and can't play with it because of such a problem :/

But if a reboot is safe I'll give it a shot if the update hasn't finished tomorrow morning.

[AdamB]

When I had this problem MBI support told me to try updating via ethernet rather than USB. This worked, took longer than 15 minutes, but it worked. Might want to try that if you are updating via USB.

[Sascha Willems]

Sadly we can't get the printer to connect over ethernet. It gets an IP and you can access it via the browser, but neither the camera seems to work (it's grayed out on the printer's display) nor is Makerbot Desktop able to connect to it, even if I enter the IP manually. So currently updating via USB is our only option.

And fyi, the firmware update still isn't finished. It's been running for 24h now and I don't believe that the process will ever finish. Longest firmware update I've ever ran :(

[moemix]

Same here. Update was running all night long.. :( 

Our printer is connected over ethernet. So that doesn't seem to be the problem..Fortunately a reboot is safe.

Next step: I'l lcontanct my local reseller (in Germany), maybe they've got an idea...

moemix

[Sascha Willems]

Just rebooted it too, after almost 30h of being stuck on the update process and it rebooted fine. We'll try to update the firmware again.

[Jørg Høyland]

Hello, I had the same problem. Even after 24hours it was still not done. Rebooted and it managed to do the update on the 3rd try.

So rebooting seems safe and it just needs a couple of tries to upgrade-