Author Topic: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details  (Read 340991 times)

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Offline amspire

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #50 on: February 15, 2018, 11:29:42 am »
With a GPL license, UEI and other companies can still use the code. However, they need to share their improvements to the code, which is just fair. Therefore, I strongly support the use of a GPL license for this.
If for internal reasons which is their business, UEi just cannot GPL code, is it better if they can make use of our code and so everybody gets our improvements, plus their secret source, or is it better that they ignore our code.

In projects like this, there will always be one person who does the bulk of the work and I am totally happy if that person picks any license they want to. However GPL is open, but it is very dictatorial. There are many open source projects that pick permissive license for the reason that they want others to be able to use the code without any demands. It may be UEi have some secret source relating to their in-house calibration methods that they absolutely cannot make open source.

Remember, UEi are giving us something - they designed the meter with the features Dave asked for and they have given us the schematic. Through Dave, we have direct contact with someone who can talk to the developers. That is probably more then any other multimeter company has given. We want to encourage UEi to continue to make the meter, otherwise any code we produce will only be useful to a few hundred people (assuming most only use official firmware) and the project may die in a year or two.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2018, 11:35:04 am by amspire »
 
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Offline glarsson

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #51 on: February 15, 2018, 11:32:24 am »
The GPL license also requires them to share everything the GPL code is linked to. In the case of this multimeter it is everything. If they can't share everything (licensed 3:rd party libraries) then they can't use the GPL code, will not make improvements and have nothing to share. A loss for everyone.
 
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Online Brumby

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #52 on: February 15, 2018, 01:54:44 pm »
There is an alternative...

They can take the improvements as seen from the User perspective - and then code their own changes to deliver the same, or similar (or better?) benefits.

While they may not have the benefit of the coding, they will have the benefit of knowing something is possible and - as is typical of this community - the issues addressed along the way.

As a further advantage and incentive - by seeing what features/fixes get support here, they will have a better idea of what is worth the effort.
 

Offline cjs

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #53 on: February 18, 2018, 05:20:31 am »
One more thing to keep in mind with your license:

Unless you're getting copyright assignments for all contributed code, that code not assigned to you or your project remains owned by the contributor and only he or she can relicense it under any other terms. Once your project starts to grow this can effectively preclude changing the license even if everyone agrees that they want to change it. This happened to us with NetBSD; although everybody wants to move all the code to a two-clause BSD license (in part because the advertising clause of the 4-clause license is especially annoying) there is a great deal of code that cannot have the licence changed because we can't track down the owners of the copyright. (The owner may not even be the author, such as in cases where the author is deceased.)

Regarding inability to use GPL code, that can go beyond amspire's points that a company may have internal reasons that they don't want to open all the source in their devices. Source code licensed from external vendors may not allow it even if the company would prefer to do it. Or, worse yet, certain open source licences are incompatible with the GPL, meaning that there are cases where you can't combine code from two different open source projects.

Personally, as someone who's been writing both opens-source and commercial software for a couple of decades now, I use GPL and accept only code with a copyright assignment to me when I'm interested in preserving my own ability to exploit the code commercially at a later date. The GPL in this case is essentially a commercial profit protection mechanism. If I don't anticipate that I'd want to commercialize a product, I use a much less restrictive license so that the code can do maximum good in the world.
 

Offline amspire

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #54 on: February 18, 2018, 06:03:58 am »
Personally, as someone who's been writing both opens-source and commercial software for a couple of decades now, I use GPL and accept only code with a copyright assignment to me when I'm interested in preserving my own ability to exploit the code commercially at a later date.
If the GPL license is used, this is the exact model I would like to see. Almost certainly, one person will be responsible for making this code into a quality reality and they deserve to have the copyright assignment. It would mean that they would be able to offer companies an alternate paid commercial license if that is what the companies need.

It might be that the SQLite3 model is the best one to follow. SQLite is open source but is not open contribution. They do not even accept patches. With this model, anyone can go and make their own variant, but if you want to use the official SQLite code, you are using code that has almost fully been written by just two people.

With one person or one team writing the 121GW code, you can get a consistent coding quality and the finally reliability is totally in the hand of the programmers who know the code the best. They can take suggestions and bug reports, but they then make the changes themselves.

One direction this code could go would be towards general purpose multimeter code with a big config.h file which allows you to set pin assignments, multimeter A/D chip choice and so on. The code does not have to be only for the 121GW multimeter. Something like the OpenWRT project that at the start only worked on one Linksys WRT54 router. Now it works on many different processors with many different chipset options.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2018, 06:16:08 am by amspire »
 

Offline tpw_rules

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #55 on: February 18, 2018, 05:46:17 pm »
So I've been looking and a BSD 3-clause license doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. I thought GPL initially because I didn't really want UEI taking our code for nothing in return to improve their meters, but if they can't do that I guess it becomes a kind of pointless exercise.

Now how do I license the code under that? Can I just drop LICENSE.md in the Git root? How does this affect all the STMicro library code?
 

Offline Diosol

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #56 on: February 19, 2018, 10:17:51 pm »
I'm kinda blind and don't know how to use google. But I just haven't found where to download the newest firmware. Like 1.05 shown in newest video. At the moment this is just a blue expensive brick in my hands.

Does anyone have a link where the newest firmware's are hosted or can be downloaded?
 

Online lowimpedance

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #57 on: February 19, 2018, 11:04:43 pm »
 The later revision firmware is being tested and refined thus has not been released yet, so no download links exist. (vers 1.05 may even be no longer the current one).
The meter is still usable and is hardly a complete brick. As stated this testing (inside UEI currently) takes time and its best to wait for the currently reported bugs to be fixed.
And then a new much improved firmware be made available.
The odd multimeter or 2 or 3 or 4...or........can't remember !.
 

Offline Yannik

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #58 on: February 24, 2018, 09:50:39 am »
I'd still be in favour of a copyleft license. Maybe LGPL is a good compromise?
 
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Online newbrain

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #59 on: February 25, 2018, 08:26:29 am »
I'd still be in favour of a copyleft license. Maybe LGPL is a good compromise?
It could be used, but given that static linking is used:
Quote
(1) If you statically link against an LGPL'd library, you must also provide your application in an object (not necessarily source) format, so that a user has the opportunity to modify the library and relink the application.
UEI (or anyone else using the code) would be forced to distribute the objects from its application (and possibly any special tool needed for the relinking, but not 100% sure).

This is not an unreasonable burden, but can still be seen as showstopper in a corporate environment.
LGPL is ok when you can dinamically link or use a form of IPC, but that rarely applies to embedded code.
Nandemo wa shiranai wa yo, shitteru koto dake.
 

Offline Halcyon

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #60 on: May 17, 2018, 05:59:56 am »
On the subject of firmware, has there been any official/stable release of firmware beyond 1.01? Forgive me if details have been posted elsewhere.
 

Online firewalker

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #61 on: May 17, 2018, 07:47:04 am »
On the subject of firmware, has there been any official/stable release of firmware beyond 1.01? Forgive me if details have been posted elsewhere.

Yes. 1.15

https://www.eevblog.com/wp-content/plugins/download-attachments/includes/download.php?id=12211
Become a realist, stay a dreamer.

 

Offline Candid

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« Last Edit: May 24, 2018, 03:29:07 pm by Candid »
 
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Offline ChunkyPastaSauce

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #63 on: May 24, 2018, 03:40:23 pm »
Change log is in new manual  1.17: "Improved accuracy of voltage measurement in AC and DC VA modes."
 

Offline Candid

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #64 on: June 15, 2018, 10:01:15 am »
 
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Offline Dampmaskin

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Offline Seppy

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #66 on: June 25, 2018, 02:07:27 am »
Manual has been updated with the changes that occured in 1.21 and 1.22.
 
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Online Jon.C

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Offline tpw_rules

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #68 on: August 05, 2018, 04:33:49 pm »
Any chance we will see the images for the BLE112 released as well?

For the record, there's nothing particularly interesting in the BLE112, but I believe it is 121GW specific. The STM32 talks to it over RS232 at 19200 baud using the following format (sans quotes): "=<packet data as documented, in hex>\r\n". It can also receive raw bytes from the bluetooth connection. I imagine this firmware is an example somewhere in the SI stuff, but I haven't found it.
 

Offline Candid

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #69 on: August 07, 2018, 02:47:41 pm »
v1.25 is out and new manual with changelog...

https://www.eevblog.com/product/121gw/
 

Offline cmumford

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #70 on: August 07, 2018, 03:46:12 pm »
v1.25 is out and new manual with changelog...

https://www.eevblog.com/product/121gw/

Changes since 1.22:

  • Auto-ranging loop in M Ohms range resolved..
  • Burden Voltage glitch resolved.
 
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Offline 1anX

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #71 on: August 11, 2018, 10:25:18 am »
I just tried loading in the latest V1.26 but unfortunately after many attempts had to give up on it.
Loaded V1.25 back on to the SD card and it loaded onto the meter without a problem.
Maybe the image of the V1.26 file Dave has placed to download is the problem?
Anyone else tried to install the new firmware yet?
 

Online firewalker

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #72 on: August 11, 2018, 10:51:54 am »
No problem for me. Did you rename the file to EEVBlog.bin?

Alexander.
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Offline 1anX

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #73 on: August 11, 2018, 11:11:08 am »
No problem for me. Did you rename the file to EEVBlog.bin?

Alexander.

Yep your right, it was my mistake after numerous updates I managed to forget to drop off the version number from the bin file  :palm:
 

Offline Zkronk

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Re: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter Firmware Details
« Reply #74 on: August 12, 2018, 08:43:55 am »
What is new in the 1.26 firmware?
The bin-file is available on the EEVBlog-site, but the change log in the PDF-manual is not updated :(
 


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