[WeatherNo108Participant]

I downloaded dLive director v1.9A and clicked on update MixRack, the upgrade process started, but after couple of seconds the dLive director exited.

The dLive-firmware-update-instructions-Issue-6.1.pdf document says: “Do not interrupt this process. Failure to complete the transfer may result in firmware corruption.”
It seems the dLive director itself is interrupting the process, and the above statement suggests that such action can brick the MixRack.
The document also says ‘An “Update Success” message will appear when the update is complete’
I was hoping that a background process was still working on the update so I waited 40 minutes for the Update Success message to appear, but that hasn’t happenend, therefore I started again the dLive director and I saw that the firmware is still on V1.98.
The web UI ugrade can be another option, but again the document says use the dLive director method above V1.9

The last thing I want is to brick the device therefore I even didn’t power cycle it and keeping it online until I receive further instructions.
Could you please let me know why the dLive director exited without giving any error message, why the MixRack is still on the old version and what would be the best way to solve this?

Thank you!

[WeatherNo108Participant]

Hi Nicola

That is great news that you are researching the area. To help your research I would like to clarify couple of concepts.
1. NTP comes in two flavors:

– Full featured Network Time Protocol (NTP)
– Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP)

The differences are summarized here: https://timetoolsltd.com/ntp/sntp-overview/

The simplest example is a computer with Windows which features SNTP. I can set up the clock and time zone manually and even without connecting to the Internet the clock show the time, however if the computer is connected to the Internet from time to time the Windows’ SNTP client adjust the local clock and therefore achieves millisecond level accuracy.

In contrast a computer with Linux uses the Full featured NTP which connects to multiple NTP servers at the same time and the NTP client continously regulates the clock by slowing down or speeding it up to sync it to the time reference in this way microsecond level accuracy can be achieved. However the same applies here, if there is no Internet connection at all, that is no problem, the not very accurate local clock continue provide the time. Once the computer will have Internet connection again the microsecond accuracy restores.

I believe the requester of the NTP feature referred to the SNTP version where no need to specify multiple NTP servers with continous adjustment, only one NTP server with regular update is enough therefore achieving millisecond accuracy is OK.
NTP has introduced in 1985, since than innumerable open source code has developed which provide solution to all challenges.

2. Your comment that Time Zone and Daylight Savings Time settings rely on the Internet connection has nothing to do with NTP, that is a separate function called Location Services, and I must say if Location Services rely on Internet (and not GPS) that is already bad because it is quite unreliable, better to set the Time Zone and DST manually.
Using Location Services also means that A&H would need to keep a list updated with all cities’ Time Zone and DST parameters, and since these are changing sometimes this would cause headache for A&H, and if it is not updated would again introduce inaccuracy on the dLive clock.
Better let the user quickly check the local parameters on the https://www.timeanddate.com/ website and set them up manually.

To boil down all the above as I mentioned in my previous post we don’t need complicated setup with a few easy fields the required parameters can be set for a Simple Network Time Protocol client and will work fabulously.

Please make these fields available:

– NTP server IP address
– Update frequency (in minutes; between 1 and 1440)
– UTC offset
– DST enable / disable
– DST start: Month / week of month / day of week / hour
– DST end: Month / week of month / day of week / hour

Thank you!

[WeatherNo108Participant]

Thank you for the answers. Very helpful. I will go with DX boxes.

[WeatherNo108Participant]

If developers decided to implement a clock it would better be accurate. Many systems are installed ones with access to an NTP server. Setting a clock manually, keeping up with daylight savings and dealing with drifts are quite outdated in 2023. Making the NTP sync available with an hourly update frequency is not a big deal really.

Fields should be:
– NTP server IP address
– UTC offset
– DST enable / disable
– DST start: Month / week of month / day of week / hour
– DST end: Month / week of month / day of week / hour

Thank you!

[Author]

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