Oct 29, 2021 - Bobcat pushed the latest OTA update at 08:00 PDT today.

The following updates occurred in this OTA:

Helium Hotspot Firmware updated to 2021.10.27.0

Bobcat Miner Firmware updated to 1.0.2.37

This is a helium software-only update. Other than a version bump, no other changes were made to the Bobcat firmware.

This mandatory helium hotspot firmware reverts the var cache causing unforeseen issues and upgrades blockchain-core to include many State Channel-related optimizations.

Read more from the Helium engineering blog here.

Update

We pushed Helium's Emergency Release for Dropped Packets later on the same day, at 9pm PDT 10/29. This bumped the Bobcat firmware version to 1.0.2.38. This emergency OTA was a Helium mandatory update for all manufacturers and the only change included was the release of the new 2021.10.29.0 Helium Hotspot firmware as it included necessary fixes for the previous Helium Hotspot Firmware version 2021.10.27.0.

Additional Information

If you just received your hotspot, please follow the onboarding must-do instructions sent alongside the tracking email. The most important step is to make sure your hotspot is connected to the ethernet for at least an hour before pairing with Bluetooth and onboarding onto the Helium app. This will ensure your hotspot is on the latest OTA version when onboarding and will eliminate the ‘onboarding key not found’ error that some users encountered due to adding the hotspot while on an older firmware version. Even in those cases, the error will disappear as soon as the hotspot receives the latest OTA.

1. If your firewall settings have all of China blocked via restriction in both incoming and outgoing directions, your hotspot will not be able to connect to our device management platform and will not be able to receive the OTA updates.

2. If your hotspot OTA version is older than 1.0.2.30, please fill out the form here. The team will check this routinely and update any hotspots that are left behind on a daily basis.

FAQ

What's the best way to check my hotspot firmware version?

• Go to your Bobcat Diagnoser page and click 'Miner (5s)'

• Wait approximately 5 seconds for the page to load.

• Inside the Json files, check "ota_version" and "Image," which will let you know the Bobcat and Helium firmware versions you are on.