My lifeline died after a firmware upgrade.

[GregSaiz]

I must have been good last year because Santa delivered a lifeline for Christmas. It seemed like the perfect unit for boating, kayaking and for an upcoming live aboard trip to tubbataha.

After getting everything setup on my Mac and using it a few times, I took the lifeline in to my office to upgrade firmware on a PC (no firmware upgrades on Mac). Unfortunately something went wrong in the process my lifeline is dead. It will not turn on at all. The instructions from Nautilus tech support didn't work so they are having a tech call me tomorrow. I don't see how it can be recovered unless they have a restore boot key sequence but we shall see.

Not a great first impression for a device that you will need in an emergency. I hope this is just an early adopter bug and I will say their support seems responsive. I'll post updates here as things progress.

 

[Garth]

Good. Let me know what turns out. I haven't set mine up yet.

 

[gsk3]

Almost any device will turn into a brick if it is interrupted during a firmware update. I wouldn't be concerned that this means it won't be a reliable device for safety.

 

[deeper thoughts]

Interested also

 

[GregSaiz]

Okay, good news! After getting on the phone with the Nautilus folks, they walked me through the procedure to clear the unit so firmware could be restored. Basically you press and hold all three buttons for 10 seconds or so, plug it in and use the windows desktop software to restore firmware. Contrary to their first advice, the unit does not need to be turned for the three button wipe to work.

This is a brand new design so I'm not shocked some of the software tools are a bit buggy (firmware update) . What's very encouraging is the responsiveness of their support team and that their firmware recovery design. I'm going to be diving tomorrow and will do some range testing with a handheld marine radio.

One final request: Find a way to do firmware updates via the Mac. Using a PC or boot disk is a real pain...

 

[Bhtmec2]

Glad to hear you got it fixed. I have not done the firmware update yet. This had me concerned a little...

 

[clarkaddison]

How come they aren't compatible with Mac? That's a deal breaker for lots of people.

 

[mmitchell6]

Just purchased my unit and spent about 30 minutes on with Tech Support. The firmware can "only" be upgraded using a "pure" PC, visualization will not work, at least according to the tech person I dealt with. I would not say they mislead us in saying "mac compatible", it is, they can work with Macs, but "only" after using a PC for a firmware update. If I had known this, I would have waited, so now I'm off to find a "pure' PC. Yes, this is a deal breaker.