Topic: New bridge problem - defective?

[cawgijoe]

Bridge was delivered today at 11:00am to Acurite.

Hopefully I will hear from them soon.

[MikeSatter]

Hopefully they will not make you wait long!

[cawgijoe]

Update:

I received an e-mail that they tested my returned bridge today and determined that the firmware did not download properly. They re-flashed the unit, tested it and I now have a tracking number for the return shipment.

I do appreciate Acurite's quick attention to this.

I also was thinking that maybe it would be better for Acurite to flash and test these units prior to shipment to hopefully save themselves returns. But, maybe it's more cost effective to fix the occasional failed unit then to make sure they are ready for use.

I will let you all know how it goes once I receive it.

[cawgijoe]

Got the bridge back today. Took a week to get here. It's the same one I sent. Plugged it in and it connected within a couple of minutes.

All is working. I do appreciate Acurite making it right, but I really do wish they could have sent it back quicker.

Anyway, I'm happy to be on-line and having fun.

[MikeSatter]

I am happy to hear you got it back and it's working good!

[Rhino]

I received my new weather station yesterday. Set everything up. Plugged in the bridge. Both blue lights came on. About five minutes later, light one started flashing. Light two remained solid. A few minutes later both lights went out. I tried unplugging and resetting several times. The best I could get was light two flashing rapidly....light one out....never comes back on....and the green and yellow lights on in the back.

I called support and left a message yesterday and again today. I assume because it's the weekend, support is limited or non-existent. I will try again Monday.

Do you think the unit is defective?

Based on this post- I can tell you exactly what happened.

After powering up the bridge, it will connect to the AcuLink service cloud and query the server for info- including the latest firmware update. If the firmware needs to be updated, the device will begin updating firmware within a few minutes usually- depending on traffic. The blue light on the left side of the bridge is the "uplink" indicator, the blue light on the right side is the "RF receive" indicator. During firmware download, the uplink indicator on the left will blink VERY rapidly as the bridge downloads the new firmware- it blinks so rapidly in fact (depending on your internet connection) that it never really fully illuminates- sometimes in a very well lit room it can look like it is off- but if you look VERY carefully from the side it is actually still functioning- its just in download mode. The right side LED (RF receive indicator) is solid, because RF is shut down during a firmware download process.

What happened in your case is the firmware update process was likely interrupted several times by powering down/resetting, etc., which of course the bridge software is designed to handle automatically and reboot itself and try updating the firmware over again. We always advise users to let the bridge "do it's thing" in the first 20 minutes or so of being powered on, it is an automatic process that works 100% of the time if left alone. In VERY, VERY rare cases, if you remove power and re-introduce it (plug, unplug, etc.), many devices can be affected negatively, the bridge included if all the planets align so to speak.

I am glad to hear we were able to help you in the end, I apologize it did not go so smoothly at first. I trust you will find the bridge and the AcuLink services very reliable now that you are up and running. Please let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with!

Thanks for choosing AcuRite!

Ryan
AcuRite Product Development Team

[cawgijoe]

Rhino,

Thanks for the detailed response. The system is up and running and it's been great. Love it.

Not sure what happened with the initial try, but I know that both lights were completly out because the room was dark.

But, these things happen and the important thing is the company came through.

A couple of suggestions. There should be a note that mentions leaving the bridge alone for twenty minutes or so as you suggest. The second thing is that it took a full week after the bridge was mailed from Acurite for me to receive it. I originally sent it Fedex Ground on a Monday and it was received on Wednesday at 11:00 am of the same week. Suggest that with these under warranty, out of the gate failures that the company send the unit back in a faster manner.

Just a suggestion.

Thanks again for your response and looking forward to adding the color display unit once it comes back into stock.

[Brock]

For the benefit of anyone else suffering with this problem... in my case, substituting a quality Ethernet cable solved the problem.  The one bundled with my bridge caused the connect lights at the port to light up, but was evidently not able to pass data reliably.  I twigged to this when I noted that an IP address had not been requested from my DHCP server.  After swapping the cable and doing the major reset, the update was able to complete and the unit began to work properly.  But I wasted two days getting what should have been idiot proof to work...

Thankfully, Acu-Rite redeemed themselves by replacing my 5-in-1 (that didn't display wind direction) in a prompt and relatively painless way.