This is a where credit is due kind of post. I hope it is appropriate.
We've been hanging out in La Paz, Mexico waiting on some replacement Kyocera solar panels. I'm waiting the final outcome there but so far I'm impressed with them, too. At any rate, I noticed in an add for the Watchmate that it had been significantly upgraded from the version I bought this summer. So, I sent an email off to Vesper to see if there was an upgrade path. There are two: you can sent the unit to a dealer and have it upgraded free or you can download the new firmware and do it yourself. So, I figured that I'd try the download thing since I'm a long way from a dealer. To do the upgrade yourself requires connecting the Watchmate to a serial port in your computer. That requires building a cable. I put cables together pretty regularly so that seemed like no problem to me. Sadly, in this case I built a cable with an intermittent failure. The computer and the Watchmate could "shake hands" over it but it created just enough noise to crash the firmware upload... I did suspect the cable and fiddled with it a bit but didn't cure it so I contacted tech support. Jeff, over there emailed me, IMed me and Skyped me for most of a day starting before he got to work. He sent me a specially compiled debugging program and a special terminal program to help sus out the problem. I was simply amazed. Great support, and I think worth a public kudo. I think the product is excellent, too.
I know I'm kind of a short-timer here, but this really is not spam. I've been a long time contributor to the once great rec.boat.cruising usenet group and you can track me down there by searching for tsmwebb. I also posted a few notes here as tsmwebb as a guest...
--Tom.
We've been hanging out in La Paz, Mexico waiting on some replacement Kyocera solar panels. I'm waiting the final outcome there but so far I'm impressed with them, too. At any rate, I noticed in an add for the Watchmate that it had been significantly upgraded from the version I bought this summer. So, I sent an email off to Vesper to see if there was an upgrade path. There are two: you can sent the unit to a dealer and have it upgraded free or you can download the new firmware and do it yourself. So, I figured that I'd try the download thing since I'm a long way from a dealer. To do the upgrade yourself requires connecting the Watchmate to a serial port in your computer. That requires building a cable. I put cables together pretty regularly so that seemed like no problem to me. Sadly, in this case I built a cable with an intermittent failure. The computer and the Watchmate could "shake hands" over it but it created just enough noise to crash the firmware upload... I did suspect the cable and fiddled with it a bit but didn't cure it so I contacted tech support. Jeff, over there emailed me, IMed me and Skyped me for most of a day starting before he got to work. He sent me a specially compiled debugging program and a special terminal program to help sus out the problem. I was simply amazed. Great support, and I think worth a public kudo. I think the product is excellent, too.
I know I'm kind of a short-timer here, but this really is not spam. I've been a long time contributor to the once great rec.boat.cruising usenet group and you can track me down there by searching for tsmwebb. I also posted a few notes here as tsmwebb as a guest...
--Tom.
