I've been working with a pair of Leica GS18 receivers for about 4 years now and have been very happy with them. No probelms. We have kept up our upgrade subscription but never actually updated. There has been no need to.
In mid December I got an email warning that we would have to upgrade firmware by Jan 1 or there would be problems. I failed to follow up and the first time I took these out in the new year we had a failure. Things in the field appeared to be operating OK but vector data was not recorded. I wasted several hours that I will never get back.
Luckily I live near a dealership with a service department. I took it in first thing Monday and they helped me load up the new firmware and charged me nothing. It did blow off the entire morning. It took 2 hours for the service tech to update 2 receivers. I was told what I already knew - that the problem was some sort of Y2k like problem with dates, clearly a "bug".
Also luckily we are up to date on our Myworld subscription. What if we hadn't been? Would Leica have left me dead in the water until I paid the ransom?
In mid December I got an email warning that we would have to upgrade firmware by Jan 1 or there would be problems.
Ouch. That's not much notice, especially at a busy time of year.
I wonder how long Leica has known of the problem, and how wide-spread it is.
I also suspect Leica support will probably be in panic mode right about now.
I failed to follow up
Unfortunate! But you will not be the only one.
Also luckily we are up to date on our Myworld subscription. What if we hadn't been? Would Leica have left me dead in the water until I paid the ransom?
Yes, I expect they would
I just did ours same issue. The very first time I had ever updated a Leica. So it took me a bit reading and snooping around on internet to figure it out. I have never even ran one in many many years so a whole new world for me.
I received a phone call and this PDF in early December. It seems that the tilt compensation firmware may have had a date issue. The fix appears to be available without the need of a current CCP. If you are current with your Captivate updates you are golden.
I got at least two emails about this firmware update per week, beginning around Thanksgiving and completely disregarded them because my recievers don't have the tilt compensation.
Would Leica have left me dead in the water until I paid the ransom?
I don't know about Leica, but Trimble has been inconsistent in this regard.
I have a couple of R8 receivers: an R8 and an R8-3. I was given the R8 by a former employer, and bought the R8-3 from the same company. (The R8-3 purchase came first, the R8 gift followed months later as an unrelated matter.) Both had GPS week problems when I got them, both were long since EOL, and both were out of warranty contract. The R8 firmware was not upgradeable without a warranty contract (and maybe not even with, I didn't bother to check), so if I ever do use it I'll have to correct the RINEX file to fix the dates. The R8-3, however, was upgradeable without a contract, and now works fine.
I don't know why one was fixable without payment while the other was not. Maybe someone more Trimble-savvy than me can shed some light on the matter.
@jim-frame As always, "It depends" 🙂
Usually new Trimble gear comes with a one year service warranty. For that year updates are available for free.
You might choose to purchase an extended warranty for that device. That gets you the updates for the length of the warranty.
You could also have a maintenance warranty and that is year by year.
There are some limits on updates - your hardware has to support the new features so there is usually a minimum version requirement.
R8 and R8-3 have different hardware, so I would not be at all surprised that an R8-3 would have updates the R8 could not handle.
It is ridiculous that any company would sell a product that is programmed in such a way that it fails after a certain date and the company charges a fee to fix the bug they programmed into the product. Whether that fee be in the form of a subscription allowing updates or any other form. All of these issues should be fixed at no cost to the buyer of the product.
It is ridiculous that any company would sell a product that is programmed in such a way that it fails after a certain date
Indeed, very embarrassing for Leica - you can be sure it was not on purpose
I don't think that Leica is requiring a current CCP (maintenance agreement) for this fix, It appears to be a free patch. I'm sure it was stupid programing bug and they do have egg on their face for that. I will say that they made a pretty heroic effort to notify customers before the time bomb went off. I can't say that about some manufactures.