New HM7K Decoder BT Firmware (v0.7) - to do, or not to do?

[96RAF]

1 hour ago, Pendragon Sailing said:

I understand that the main improvement in this latest SPIROM version are that the CV19 corruption anomaly has been fixed.

Correct

[Pendragon Sailing]

Just one caveat to my previous post. Having updated all of my decoders (41) with the new BT Firmware (0.7.0), all but one have been successful. 
The one problem occurred with a 21 Pin decoder.

In short, the BT connection would not re-link to the App, post the firmware update, which rendered the decoder unusable 🫤
I’ve been in email correspondence with Hornby, and after trying a few things they suggested to resolve the problem, all of which were unsuccessful, the decoder is now on its way back to Margate to be checked out. 
I’ll report back when I hear from them.

All very odd given the successful installation of the other 40, but maybe some gremlins got into the system while this particular decoder was being updated.

[Baz657]

I'd updated all mine but the app was still showing as two remaining not updated. Hmmmm. Went through all HM7000 equipped locos again and even updated the 6010. I even thought at one point it might have been the 08's that the app "somehow" knew I wanted to upgrade. When I was going through the storage boxes it struck me. The Easterner and The Scotsman sets each have (had) a loco in them.

Happily all updated now.

[Rallymatt]

I have got round to this, I had the updates running in the background from my iPhone while having an operating session from DCC controller and did one power cycle after they were all done. All pretty painless 😁👍

[Pendragon Sailing]

On 13/09/2024 at 16:26, Pendragon Sailing said:

Just one caveat to my previous post. Having updated all of my decoders (41) with the new BT Firmware (0.7.0), all but one have been successful. 
The one problem occurred with a 21 Pin decoder.

In short, the BT connection would not re-link to the App, post the firmware update, which rendered the decoder unusable 🫤
I’ve been in email correspondence with Hornby, and after trying a few things they suggested to resolve the problem, all of which were unsuccessful, the decoder is now on its way back to Margate to be checked out. 
I’ll report back when I hear from them.

All very odd given the successful installation of the other 40, but maybe some gremlins got into the system while this particular decoder was being updated.

Quick update on this. it transpires that the firmware update wasn’t at fault. It was the 21 Pin socket itself which had become faulty and wasn’t connecting the decoder to the loco. It was just coincidence that it came to light when I was updating the BR firmware. Anyway, Hornby have replaced the decoder and all is now well.  An absolutely First Class customer service in all respects. The matter was dealt with extremely promptly (within 3 days), so well done Hornby !  👏👏👏

Edited September 20 by Pendragon Sailing

[Deem]

I have used only 2 HM7K decoder and updated to v0.7, all seem to working fine without any issue, my setup is Hornby Elite as power source, HM DCC app on iphone 12 Pro Max. Only issue so far is, I have seen, once I installed the sound profile, it takes quite a while to update but no indication showing the status of update. Only thing I see is when I try to go other options in the app I will get message, error, update in process with red background.

[ColinB]

13 hours ago, Deem said:

I have used only 2 HM7K decoder and updated to v0.7, all seem to working fine without any issue, my setup is Hornby Elite as power source, HM DCC app on iphone 12 Pro Max. Only issue so far is, I have seen, once I installed the sound profile, it takes quite a while to update but no indication showing the status of update. Only thing I see is when I try to go other options in the app I will get message, error, update in process with red background.

I think I have finally worked out why updating sound profile takes so long. Thanks to the guy that wanted to copy the sound files, he pointed me in the right direction. I think they are using a "SPI" device to store the profiles, the give away is the message that comes up when it starts the download. Think of it as trying to join the M25 at rush hour, single carriage way trying to enter a blocked road. I remember someone in our company wanted to use the same mechanism for high speed CAN until I pointed out it would take longer to load it, than send it. For the sound files when they are running it is perfectly ok as reading is pretty quick, it is just to load it takes a while. So the slow load times are nothing to do with WiFi, it just takes that long. The one that I looked at, was about 80 mega byte which seems about right.

Anyway just some background information to stop people trying to play with their WiFi. 

[SteveM6]

That last sentence is misleading.

Whilst the use of SPIROM leads to relatively slow load times, tests conducted by the test team and users on various forums shows that a poor WiFi connection will lead to an increase in the overall load time and can lead to loading failures.

Remember also that we have demonstrated that overall load times are device specific with Apple being generally faster than Android products and with some variability across the plethora of Android devices.

The recommendation remains that users should still 'play' with their WiFi to ensure a good connection and to remove that as a potential source of loading issues.

[ColinB]

9 minutes ago, SteveM6 said:

That last sentence is misleading.

Whilst the use of SPIROM leads to relatively slow load times, tests conducted by the test team and users on various forums shows that a poor WiFi connection will lead to an increase in the overall load time and can lead to loading failures.

Remember also that we have demonstrated that overall load times are device specific with Apple being generally faster than Android products and with some variability across the plethora of Android devices.

The recommendation remains that users should still 'play' with their WiFi to ensure a good connection and to remove that as a potential source of loading issues.

I am not going to dwell on this, but I tried it with WiFi and without, using the mobile telephone signal. I actually didn't know you could do that until again a nice guy at New Modellers pointed me in right same direction, it made little difference in timings. The difference in load times between Android and Iphone is probably more to do with their function for handling byte manipulation, we used to find the same issues with Microsoft Windows, in the end we wrote our own. It was faster and more transferable. This product was developed for Iphone, so transferring it to another platform, Android in this case, will normally have a detrimental effect. If if had been developed for Android first then Android would be faster. If you don't believe me, turn off the WiFi and do it using the mobile data available on your phone, just like I did. Of course it does depend on how good a signal you are getting on your mobile.

[dBerriff]

There are many reasons to optimise your WiFi performance, but that does not mean fiddling around with it and, from what I have seen, making things worse. Follow the installation guide. Line of sight for the radio waves is good but often impossible. Invest in a mesh system with wired backhaul if you are lucky enough to own a large property.

[ColinB]

7 minutes ago, dBerriff said:

There are many reasons to optimise your WiFi performance, but that does not mean fiddling around with it and, from what I have seen, making things worse. Follow the installation guide. Line of sight for the radio waves is good but often impossible. Invest in a mesh system with wired backhaul if you are lucky enough to own a large property.

I agree with you entirely. The other thing that is really important is the amount of time it uses WiFi is relatively small as it copies the file. Unless it loads the file in multiple chunks which I doubt, the actual chopping it up into bytes for transfer, will be handled by the Smart device, be it Andoid or Iphone.

[Tomasz-1303413]

2 hours ago, ColinB said:

I think I have finally worked out why updating sound profile takes so long. Thanks to the guy that wanted to copy the sound files, he pointed me in the right direction. I think they are using a "SPI" device to store the profiles, the give away is the message that comes up when it starts the download. Think of it as trying to join the M25 at rush hour, single carriage way trying to enter a blocked road. I remember someone in our company wanted to use the same mechanism for high speed CAN until I pointed out it would take longer to load it, than send it. For the sound files when they are running it is perfectly ok as reading is pretty quick, it is just to load it takes a while. So the slow load times are nothing to do with WiFi, it just takes that long. The one that I looked at, was about 80 mega byte which seems about right.

Anyway just some background information to stop people trying to play with their WiFi. 

That's mostly correct, as I posted in the other thread, the NuVoice N570S64A chip used in these decoders has 8 MB (64 Mbits) of built in flash memory used to store the sound and SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) to load it. The "Serial" part of that is the key, it's one bit at a time, so it's fairly slow. 

You can go to the sticky thread at the top of this forum and actually load and play the spirom files, the loading in the browser takes somewhere around 20-30 seconds or so, much faster than the load times into the locos. 

[Deem]

Please correct me if I am wrong, once the sound file is downloaded using either WIFI or Mobile Data (now a day's most common speed of download - either way - various so much that not everyone can have similar experience,  my wifi speed is anything between 400mbs to 1100mbs - mobile date range is between 70mbs to just under 500mbs) after that app communication is depend on Bluetooth data transfer rate. Various phones or iPad or tablet have Bluetooth 3.0 or 4.0 or 5.0, therfore update takes a while based on what speed your Bluetooth is transferring. Bluetooth is caped at 2.0mbs if I remember correctly to prolong the battery life, but that can only be achieved if there is interference around, now a days with so many devices in each house hold either using WiFi or Bluetooth or IR or distortion from so many electric devices it's difficult to obtain 2mbs transfer rate, hence the slow process. Once the file been transfer to decoder then it takes a while for that update to take place due to limited capabilities of decoder hardware to process.

But due the great benefit of HM7K, (which I personally prefer to use these) because I can change the sound profile when I swap the decoder to another loco, without the usage of expensive sound transfer device such as lokprogrammer. I am being on tight budget, with hobby being getting expensive every day. I prefer to use these so I can swap them around if I change the loco or sell one to buy what I want the most at the time.

[ColinB]

1 hour ago, Deem said:

Please correct me if I am wrong, once the sound file is downloaded using either WIFI or Mobile Data (now a day's most common speed of download - either way - various so much that not everyone can have similar experience,  my wifi speed is anything between 400mbs to 1100mbs - mobile date range is between 70mbs to just under 500mbs) after that app communication is depend on Bluetooth data transfer rate. Various phones or iPad or tablet have Bluetooth 3.0 or 4.0 or 5.0, therfore update takes a while based on what speed your Bluetooth is transferring. Bluetooth is caped at 2.0mbs if I remember correctly to prolong the battery life, but that can only be achieved if there is interference around, now a days with so many devices in each house hold either using WiFi or Bluetooth or IR or distortion from so many electric devices it's difficult to obtain 2mbs transfer rate, hence the slow process. Once the file been transfer to decoder then it takes a while for that update to take place due to limited capabilities of decoder hardware to process.

But due the great benefit of HM7K, (which I personally prefer to use these) because I can change the sound profile when I swap the decoder to another loco, without the usage of expensive sound transfer device such as lokprogrammer. I am being on tight budget, with hobby being getting expensive every day. I prefer to use these so I can swap them around if I change the loco or sell one to buy what I want the most at the time.

Nothing wrong with that, there a lot things I didn't know. No problem with HM7K it works and as you say it is a cheap option. You probably do the same as me, program it and then use it on DCC which is perfectly ok. In fact if someone had explained earlier what I have since learned about the SPI interface, I wouldn't have not even moaned about the load times, I know from bitter experience about SPI devices. The only issue going forward is non Hornby modern image, most Dapol, Bachmann locos use 6 functions HM7K only has 4. Accurascale and Cavalex have even more but even Zimo doesn't seem to have a decoder for those, so they will always be special. Hornby really needs to increase the number of functions to 6. 

A good way forward would be to stop blaming the Customer for a lot of the issues, all it does is stop them buying Hornby. Yes we all make mistakes and don't always read the manual but if an Application is good, you quite often don't need to.

[Tomasz-1303413]

If you think 4 functions is low, I predominantly use these decoders on plux22 locos and the best adapter I found is ESU for plux16, which only give me F1 and F2. Not sure why there are no adapters from next18 (or 21 pin) to plux22? But in the end I really hope Hornby releases a plux22 compatible version at some point in the future. 

[Landyman130]

The update is to Version 0.x.x so unless you have a problem, probably not worth it.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it

Now if it was to V 1.x.x, then that's a different matter.

[ColinB]

6 minutes ago, Tomasz-1303413 said:

If you think 4 functions is low, I predominantly use these decoders on plux22 locos and the best adapter I found is ESU for plux16, which only give me F1 and F2. Not sure why there are no adapters from next18 (or 21 pin) to plux22? But in the end I really hope Hornby releases a plux22 compatible version at some point in the future. 

I am not sure they will do that unless they make a loco with it in. Going forward HM7K could be a nice little earner if they were to do this, and at least make money on these. Does the adapter not have links you can wire up, a lot of the 8 to 21 pin ones do. I was going to use one on my new Bachmann class 25, realised it didn't support 6 functions and used a normal decoder. It wasn't until I opened it up I found that it was a plux22 so HM7k would never have fitted.

[Tomasz-1303413]

Unfortunately no, the adapter doesn't provide any external leads. The ESU next18 to plux12 provides 2 leads, but those are for the speaker only. 

[Deem]

58 minutes ago, Tomasz-1303413 said:

If you think 4 functions is low, I predominantly use these decoders on plux22 locos and the best adapter I found is ESU for plux16, which only give me F1 and F2. Not sure why there are no adapters from next18 (or 21 pin) to plux22? But in the end I really hope Hornby releases a plux22 compatible version at some point in the future. 

I don't know, if this is something can help you to give more functionality.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166710376060

Edited Friday at 17:17 by Deem

[Tomasz-1303413]

that's for plux22 decoders. What I'd need is a adapter for next18 or 21 decoder going to plux22, I could probably build one from a next18 pinout board and a plux22 plug but chances of it working well and me not frying something in the process are slim. 

[96RAF]

2 hours ago, ColinB said:

Hornby really needs to increase the number of functions to 6. 

The 21 pin and Next18 are 4+2 which is 6, albeit not 6 full voltage but 4 full voltage + 2 logic level.

[ColinB]

12 minutes ago, 96RAF said:

The 21 pin and Next18 are 4+2 which is 6, albeit not 6 full voltage but 4 full voltage + 2 logic level.

Unfortunately for a non Hornby modern diesel loco you need 6 full function outputs, there is an increasing trend to more control over the lights. It was just a suggestion. I have a couple of times considered using HM7000 for a new loco but unless it is Hornby steam there are just not enough functions to switch on the lights. Interestingly it is also an issue for LaisDCC. In the end I either use a full blown sound decoder or a Dapol Infineon. I don't know if Hornby will ever change the control of their lights on modern image, if so I imagine that is when they will change it.