Brymen firmware updates and changelogs

[picrthis]

why would anyone buy this if its all top secret? which is laughable in itself, I update firmware in many devices such as Innova OBD2 Tool Scanner, how about your computer do you think you should to ship it back to the manufacture to update the firmware for the BIOS, etc?
I'm so thankful you don't work for HP or Dell, they give the update pgm for free along with the firmware file...................Good luck to you!

[TomKatt]

In fairness - is your computer ever responsible for protecting your life from the applications you run?

When that happens, I'm pretty confident that updating firmware willy nilly will be restricted by the manufacturers for liability reasons.

[NoisyBoy]

Not sure if that’s the real reason, as many other test equipment and DMM makers, including all the A brands, allows user update if there’s provision for it.

If I can routinely download firmware for my car that I drive the family around, liability is not a good excuse. In fact, a vendor should makes its firmware user updatable in case bugs that are safety related ever surfaces, so they don’t have to take back out of warranty meters for update.

I think it is more of a corporate stubbornness, as well as so few handheld competitors offer firmware update, that drove the policy.

I have an early unit with old firmware, it does bother me that it is not upgradable.  I like the meter, but Bryman could have made it so much more appealing if they allow the user to update the firmware.

[joeqsmith]

I took our new troll's comment "why would anyone buy this if its all top secret?" to mean they want open source.  Allow every Tom Dick and Harry wanna be, play with the code.   I took the next post to suggest that was a bad idea for safety related products and I tend to agree. 

Most of my equipment is old enough that the manufactures had stopped supported them long before I purchased them.   It's laughable as our troll puts it,  to think that this would make them not worth purchasing.   If anything, the fact it is still in use today points to firmware that has stood the test of time.   I would much rather have one stable version of firmware than 100 poorly written versions updated weekly over the products life.   

I've been pretty impressed with Brymen.   If I look at the 121GW prototype compared with the Brymen BM78x prototype, Brymen was very keen on finding and correcting problems before the release.  They were also very fast in finding the root causes and correcting them.   They were also very transparent about it.   

[Fungus]

Please explain how to update the firmware in a Fluke 87V.

[TomKatt]

I suspect there's a lot more error-checking to verify your car's fw has been properly updated compared to what a little micro in a DMM is capable of, though I'm sure it could be done with checksums or the like.

But - at least in the litigious US - I can imagine lawsuits filed the first time the probe jack insertion warning fails and someone is traumatized by a fuse blowing because they probed live voltage in a current mode...

All that said, I would like the option myself.  And it makes you appreciate all the vintage gear with ROM chips where the manufacturer had ONE chance to get it right (exemplified by the Atari 2600 version of E.T.  )

[joeqsmith]

I suspect there's a lot more error-checking to verify your car's fw has been properly updated compared to what a little micro in a DMM is capable of, though I'm sure it could be done with checksums or the like.

But - at least in the litigious US - I can imagine lawsuits filed the first time the probe jack insertion warning fails and someone is traumatized by a fuse blowing because they probed live voltage in a current mode...

All that said, I would like the option myself.  And it makes you appreciate all the vintage gear with ROM chips where the manufacturer had ONE chance to get it right (exemplified by the Atari 2600 version of E.T.  )

Coming from an automotive background many many many years ago, we started out using a lot of masked parts.  You write your code, you send the code to Motorola, Motorola sends you parts that you verify.  Then you order your 50,000 parts for your prototype run.  Better have your shit together.     Worked with an idiot who was  getting ready to place an order.  I ended up going through their code line by line and found a major bug.  Saved their job but were they pissed.  How dare you question my code sort of thing.      

By the time I changed my career we were looking at tools to automate the code generation and having 100% code coverage.  Basically following aviation.   I have no idea where things are today.   

[tomud]

Not sure if that’s the real reason, as many other test equipment and DMM makers, including all the A brands, allows user update if there’s provision for it.

Yes, it is implemented when the processor gives such possibilities, e.g. it has the ability to implement a bootloader, then the firmware is encrypted, etc.

I have not seen any manufacturer of multimeters that allows you to change the firmware by, for example, connecting directly to the processor (ISP), etc.

I don't know what "A" brands you're talking about but I had both Fluke and Keysight handheld multimeters and they didn't have the upgrade option. The only equipment that allows this is some laboratory multimeters and the aforementioned Fluke 287/289 multimeters.

[NoisyBoy]

Hence I emphasized “if there’s provision for it”

I also agreed that very few handheld DMM is firmware upgradable, and the lack of competition might have driven Brymen’s decision.

BTW, some Keysight handheld, like Fluke, is upgradable through the IR-USB cable.

I like Brymen, no issue with their meter, all I am saying is they could make it more appealing, to me at least, if they are user updatable.