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.
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
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.
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:
Probably not supported:
(both seems to need too much memory for the low speced ESP8266).
What are the favorites from the community?
Hi Achim,
I did read the above, however my concerns are that:
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.
As far as I know we never advertised them to work with local home assistant but if some of our description is unclear please put the link here and I am more than happy to correct / clarify it.
It was definitely mentioned in a number of places, however I may have misinterpreted how this was achieved. For example the current Indoor ONE webpage states
“This gives you complete ownership and freedom of your data, and our community has built several extensions to existing data platforms like Home Assistant (ESPHome)”
So perhaps it was always intended you flash the device with ESPhome to achieve this and it is not possible with the AirGradient firmware natively.
Thank you. Speaking solely for myself, I care about two features:
And really, once #1 works I don’t care much about #2. I just don’t love unscrewing metal screws from the soft plastic housing repeatedly as it feels like it degrades a bit every time.
I have a DIY Pro 3.7 PCB.
Is there any way I can make it compatible with the 3.1.1 firmware?
Replace the D1 ESP8266 with ESP32?
Thanks
I have 2 units of DIY Pro 3.7 PCB, I bought the ESP32 D1 module already.
Actually the PCB 3.7 is missing some hardware components such as watch dog module, so I do not sure it will be work.
I am looking of the answer from Airgradient too.
I don’t expect the 3.1.1 firmware to work with a replacement module ESP32 that is in the D1 pinout. I expect the Arduino code is going to use the pin numbers for the SMD ESP32-C3 chip, but the D1 pinout version will have different pin numbers.
I know the ESPHome version wouldn’t work with what is out there now, since the ESP32 based config have different pins from the D1 Mini based version, but it needs to be compiled for the proper chip. It could be done, but I haven’t got the chip, and haven’t tried it.
Yes 3.1.1 will not work on it directly but as mentioned above we are working on a version that would at least bring some partial support of the new software features.
Very much looking forward to this. Left my airgradient unscrewed in anticipation.
Thanks, I really appreciate the effort!
@Henri @Cantos @jfitzell
Just a quick update from our firmware developer who currently works on implementing the new features for the old hardware that he makes good progress and we might have the first test versions available end of next week.
Could you help us testing?
Hi @Achim_AirGradient, as a general rule I’m very happy to beta test etc, but unless it’s possible to get to OTA upgrades then unfortunately it’s not really practical because I not only need to take the monitor offline but need to unscrew the case every time so that I can get to the internal USB port and button. If an OTA upgrade becomes possible then very happy to test it/future updates. At the moment (with case on) I’m running Malloc’s espHome firmware so I assume that switching back to stock will require USB access even if it can be OTA after that?