I bought a DIY Pro Kit Pre-Soldered (version 3.7) a year ago, and I’m wondering if it’s still getting updates? I’m hoping it’s not EoL already.
You can get the latest software with this link
https://www.airgradient.com/documentation/diy-pro-presoldered-v37/#software
Interesting thought concept for an open source product 
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Interesting thought concept for an open source product
Sorry, but I find this answer glib and unsatisfactory.
If you’re going to sell products to consumers (rather than people buying it with the intention of hacking on the firmware) then I think it’s reasonable for them to ask how long AirGradient intends to support a piece of hardware. This should be published for each piece of hardware. If there’s no commitment from AirGradient to support its hardware for any length of time this should be very clearly stated in the purchasing process (I don’t remember seeing this when I purchased my DIY Pro or ONE systems, but if I missed it then that’s my bad).
You should take a look at how major open source projects handle this. They provide a lifecycle for their systems, for example you might say that from launch day a given model will get
- 2 years of new features, including backporting features from any sucessor hardware where possible
- 2 more years of bugfixes, including backporting fixes from any sucessor hardware where possible
- Any further updates will have to be DIY
Sorry for the short glib (but it was longer than your EoL comment :).
I have some detailed thoughts on that but first would like to hear more community members opinion on this. So please share your thoughts
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I have to agree that it feels like AirGradient is EoL the Pro model based on the D1 mini.
No mention of it on this page for Indoor devices:
Indoor Air Quality Monitor (airgradient.com)
No picture on the top section of the Documentation page:
Build instructions (airgradient.com)
Even if you do find the page in the smaller boxes lower on the Documentation page, the software doesn’t have version numbers like the other newer models and unsure if the latest Dashboard enhancements are bring developed for this model:
The AirGradient DIY Air Quality Sensor (Pro Presoldered-Version, PCB Version 4.2)
No example folder/file for the Pro model at all
arduino/examples at master · airgradienthq/arduino (github.com)
Not long ago when the Arduino code was being re-written, only the ONE and Open Air models were being developed. I do see a BASIC model, but Pro is missing.
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I have some detailed thoughts on that but first would like to hear more community members opinion on this. So please share your thoughts
TL;DR: Customers will expect AirGradient to provide software support for the systems they sell. “It’s Open Source” is not a good enough answer. It’s essential that AirGradient define a software update lifecycle policy for every system, and that policy should cover several years of updates and features. Failure to do so will hurt your good reputation.
Longer verison: As AirGradient grows (and I hope you do!) an increasing percentage of your customers will not have the skills, time, or knowledge to hack on the software, flash firmware etc… They just want to get air quality data (this is me). Over time the vast majority of your customers will be in this group. Those customers will have some undefined assumption about ongoing software updates, even if it’s not something they actively think about before purchasing. This expectation will be set by their previous experiences with other products - their phones, laptops, fitness trackers, etc… Most of those products get software updates for at least a few years after purchase.
If customers buy an AirGradient product and find out that AirGradient doesn’t meet their (perhaps undefined-till-now, perhaps unreasonable!) support expectations you’ll have angry and disappointed customers on your hands. For this reason AirGradient should have a defined update policy for every system it sells. Then there are no surprises for the customer. That’s going to cost resources (because you have to do it, too!) but it’s the only way you’ll be able to build up long term trust. If people buy systems and find out they’re not getting updates that were reasonably expected they will be angry and it will hurt your reputation.
Further, it is reasonable for customers to expect several years at least of features and bug fixes on their hardware. This stuff is not cheap, especially for people outside the US. I’ve spent almost $800 NZD buying and shipping your sensors. If I find out (and I still don’t have an official answer!) that the DIY Pro I bought less than a year ago is no longer getting updates that will make me mad. When will you drop support for the two ONE systems I just bought? Are those going to be EoL after a year when the next system comes out? Will I be able to trust the sensor data from older, non-supported devices when I see that newer ones are getting updates?
Sorry for the short glib (but it was longer than your EoL comment :).
Look, I’m sorry, I know customers can be annoying, but please don’t talk back to me like this (the “but it was longer than your EoL comment :)” bit). My question was very simple: “I bought a DIY Pro Kit Pre-Soldered (version 3.7) a year ago, and I’m wondering if it’s still getting updates?” and I expressed the hope that it wasn’t end-of-life. What do you want from me? This is not how to handle support. I’ve had two replies from you and neither has answered my question. What’s the official answer?
Thanks for that, and also thanks for your previous comment linking me to the firmware. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my Mac to recognise the DIY Pro device, even with the extra drivers linked on that page. I know it’s not a cable issue because the ONE sensors connect and flash just fine. I don’t know how to check my firmware version or to know what to do at this point.
It does seem abandoned, and if so then I’ll be pretty annoyed about it.
In the Pro boards, the USB port available through the case only provides power. In order to do a data connection, you will need to open the case by removing the screws and removing the stand (if you have the stand clips installed) so you can connect to the USB port on the D1 Mini board itself. Then you’ll be able to flash the firmware.
There is a difference between the End of active development, and End of Life. Nothing is going to stop this device from using the sensors and displaying the data, so they aren’t end of life.
As far as I know, the dashboard is still fully supported, although I don’t know if all of the recent improvements of being able to change the behavior of the AirGradient device from the online Dashboard has made it to the Pro model at this time, as the ONE is the most recent and actively developed board.
There are also other firmwares, such as ESPHome that is based on a completely separate code base and provides functionality for all of the sensors and there is no reason to expect that to be unsupported anytime soon as well.
In the end, the code is either Arduino or ESPhome based, and that continues to be available, so you’ll be able to keep using the devices no matter what.
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The esp8266 (D1 Mini) based versions are not EoL. Far from it. Actually the version 3 of the firmware - that is a complete rewrite - has a built in functionality to be compatible with both chip versions.
However, it is not simple to make the new code backwards compatible. A few reasons.
-
the basic kit and older Pro models don’t have the hardware button. So this new functionality cannot be implemented and we do need to find a work around
-
the esp8266 has severe limitations from processing power and memory so new features of the firmware might just not be able to run on it
-
in general the esp8266 runs less stable. The more complex the firmware gets the more we might run into unforeseen issues
Now we also need to clarify the expectations. Does the community primarily care about bug fixes and security updates or new feature updates for old models? How do we deal with the limitations I mentioned above?
We do offer the boards in our shop so that people can upgrade to the latest hardware generation if they so wish.
I agree that we need to come up with a clear strategy on this and communicate it. But I hope that the community also understands that our resources are not limitless.
We currently pay four developers to work at AirGradient (not only the firmware), all is self funded (we don’t have investors) and most of the profit we generate with the kit goes back directly into this kind of work.
I am very thankful for @MallocArray to maintain the ESPhome version but other than him we have very little code contributions.
We are still doing some fundamental work with the new firmware version but once we are through that, we will add more specific code for the older versions.
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I also have DIY Pro 4.2, I want to compile the latest version myself.
Has anyone able to build in the Arduino IDE?
Thanks @MallocArray , you’ve just explained why my device is completely unable to upprade to the latest firmware, despite following all the instructions to the letter (and my device looking just like the images posted on the firmware pages).
I have to say, I both both DIY Pre-Soldered versions less than a year ago, and within 3 months I felt like they were no longer supported and weren’t mentioned on the website anymore.
Yup, have opened it and used the separate USB connector and button and now it’s showing as a device in windows… but of course there is zero documentation about the driver to install (other than a “here’s 3 random chinese websites that are commonly used by ESP32” statement)
And I don’t know why I bothered. I’ve worked out what driver to install, and now get this message.
To be completely honest I deeply regret my purchase of the two AirGradients. I thought from the website that this was a highly supported option rather than some of the closed systems I’ve seen elsewhere, and in practice it’s more closed and less supported than other things I could have bought for similar money (in Australia at least)
I kinda feel the same way, and it’s sad because I like the mission of the company, but the way they silently dropped support for the older unit and the continued lack of clarity around the support lifetime for the current unit (apologies if it’s on the website; I couldn’t see it just now) means I won’t be buying any more and I couldn’t recommend that anyone else does, either.
@dracken the good news is I installed MallocArray’s ESPhome last night on my Pro and it is now behaving like I originally expected it to. I’ll install the same on my Outdoor over the weekend and report back, fingers crossed it will be just as successful!
@dracken and others.
I can understand your frustration but did you see my detailed answer why the support of the old model is very difficult above?
There are severe hardware limitations on the old board and chipset that we cannot just overcome easily.
Please keep in mind that the old versions still work as intended and are not bricked at all. When you purchased that version, none of the current functionality was promised or in the pipeline. So all the functionality you expected at the point of purchase still exists and nothing was taken away.
Now having said this, we made great efforts to support the old chipset with the new firmware architecture and so the ESP8266 chipset is still supported. So it would probably be not too difficult to add support for the older pro models but due to hardware limitations not all features will be available. I will discuss this with our team how we can start at least adding support for some of the features that the old hardware supports.
As the complete code base is open source, it would be great to get more community support here. Currently we pay a full time coder only working for the open source part and get very very little contributions.
As mentioned above I am extremely thankful to @MallocArray for maintaining the ESPHome edition which is a great alternative to our stock firmware. For people that want to upgrade their monitors, we also sell the new main boards in our online shop.
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What I’m reading from this and posts from a few others is that they don’t want to feel that you’ve abandoned the earlier hardware. I realize the difference between the chips and that some things aren’t possible with the earlier boards, but something like CO2 Calibration on demand has been present in the Dashboard for quite awhile but it never worked with the promise it is coming soon, and as far as I know, it never made it for the D1 Mini boards.
I also think the Night Mode is a very reasonable request, as I had one night where my HomeAssistant based night mode didn’t kick on and I had to unplug my device as the screen is just too bright in a dark room.
So if I were to make a priority list for firmware improvements for the D1 Mini boards, it would be
- CO2 calibration through Dashboard site
- Night Mode support for turning off the screen
- MQTT if at all possible with the earlier boards so it works with the HomeAssistant Integration, or other desired use cases
Enabling Over-The-Air does take up considerable space, so if that isn’t supported, I think that may be a fair trade-off for still having the features above, understanding that other firmware updates would require opening the case and connecting directly to the D1 board
I think there is reasonable expectation that devices purchased over the last year or two continue to be supported by the company that sells them. You are correct that the older devices are not prevented from working as they were, but things like CO2 calibration never worked and the Dashboard site shows these options to all devices, even if they aren’t supported, which sets the expectation that they should or will work some day.
MQTT is important to the freedom to use our data as we desire, which AirGradient proudly proclaims on the website and comparisons against other air quality monitoring companies.
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Yes, I think a great way forward would be to define together what features we can add support for. Taking your list and adding I would suggest:
- Manual CO2 calibration
- Night mode
- MQTT
- Offline mode / Factory Reset (if device has physical hardware button)
- Enhanced configuration possibilities for sensor modules (CO2 ABC days, TVOC settings etc)
Probably not supported:
- OTA updates
- Local server / mDNS
(both seems to need too much memory for the low speced ESP8266).
What are the favorites from the community?
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Hi Achim,
I did read the above, however my concerns are that:
- I only bought the devices recently (~8 months now)
- The devices were the latest versions available at the time, and I got the pre-soldered versions to minimise any problems.
- The devices I bought were advertised as supporting MQTT and local Home Assistant etc
So I don’t agree that there should be “severe hardware limitations on the old board” for a v4.2 board that works perfectly with ESPhome.