I know gf2 isn’t even on the plate right now but,
my question is when you guys do have multiple models how are you going to do the updates.( not the software that’s online but the actual firmware that is ran on the machine)… Are you guys going to send out an update that blankets all models(have the update determine which model its On and configure it’s self according)…
Or send out updates out individualy to each model eventually discontinuing updates on older models
Or even have no firmware update functionality?
I think the idea behind this is that there are no features in the firmware. It’s all cloud-based. The only thing the firmware should do is drive the hardware, maybe POST. They’ve also stated that there is 0 plan for “models” (aside from Pro and Basic). There is literally no Glowforge 2. It’s not even a thought.
Hope that helps!
- Tom
While most of what you’d think of as “features” come from the cloud, there’s a lot of important plumbing in the firmware, like the experience for getting your Glowforge up and running online for the first time, the coordination of various hardware components, the drivers, etc.
Each Glowforge is on a “channel” that determines which firmware it gets. We have the ability to put different units on different channels, e.g. one for beta, one for in-house, etc.
No plans to announce on what we’re doing with that yet, so file it under “interesting trivia” for now.
This is one of those things that’s pretty near dead last on things I’m concerned about. The logistics of updating firmware for multiple models of machines was solved years ago by Dell and others. There’s nothing that GF has to “invent” so this would seem to be a low effort/intellectual bandwidth issue ultimately for them.
And as you said, “gf2 isn’t even on the plate right now”.