Update?

how can i know if my glowforge software has been updated?
i know its suppose to randomly update through cloud.
but id like to check if my glowforge is being updated or not.

i honestly feel like it hasnt.

It’s not random. GF has an update, it gets pushed to the machine. The first time the machine powers on after the update was posted, it’ll update. If it’s already on when the update is pushed, it updates right away if it’s already idle. Otherwise I think it waits for the print to complete.

To the best of my knowledge there is no way to determine what revision of firmware is running on the printer. GF can unquestionably tell you, but you’d need to ask them to tell you…

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There’s a lot of confusion about what faster Premium means. It does NOT make your GF cut/engrave/score any faster. The only part that gets faster is the time between you hitting “print” on your screen and when the glowing button comes on (faster cloud processing of the cut file data).

The project in your screenshot takes nearly 2 hours because it’s an ENGRAVE that’s physically big - taking up most of the available cut area. Doesn’t matter that the lines are thin, the laser head still has to go back and forth across all that space. If your artwork was vector and not raster you could try out SCORE instead - it’ll be a ton faster if you like the way the way it looks.

None of that is relevant to whether your machine has been updated or not - the faster processing is all on the cloud side.

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reason i made a svg file is because im going to put an el wire through it.
its the first time im trying to do it. i just didnt think it take that long…
ive seen other machines on youtube like a cnc and it does it so quick

Engraves with a laser always take a while, the bigger the longer. If you cut it or score it it’ll be much faster.

CNC is a totally different technology using a router head.

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Is that new? I thought it only checked/installed at boot time.

And airplanes are faster than cars. You’re comparing apples to oranges.

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You can put bigger bits in machines and do what us laser people would call a “score” and yes, it’ll be much faster. As would a score by our Glowforge. The difference here is that the bit size on a CNC can make a much wider cut than the hairline width of the laser so, you have to do an engrave with the laser to etch out all that space it fit your elf wire in.

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If it isn’t “old”, I have to scratch my head and wonder WTH GF was thinking. There’s no requirement that you turn off your machine. If it only updates on a reboot, then you’d potentially have users who haven’t powered down in a while with significantly down-rev FW and no way to update them short of sending an email to tell them to power cycle.

pretty sure it’s only on start/boot. otherwise you could have GF pushing an update while you’re trying to do something, which could cause issues.

No requirement but there has been noted accuracy drift in the past as one prints more and more that rebooting fixes as it then re-centers.

Not if the machine is idle. There are very few examples of products that can update FW on the fly. The majority are “deferred” meaning the device accepts the update but doesn’t actually program it until some later trigger event, like the device going idle or being rebooted/reset.

Some of the Enterprise Class hard drive designs I worked on in the past were capable of updating FW on the fly. But few of my customers would use it, for exactly the reason you’re articulating above…

But maybe someone from GF will see this thread and answer?

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It’s been posted by staff in the past.

The machine checks for updates on power-up/reboot. They are downloaded and then, if the user hasn’t already started to use the machine, applied and the machine reboots.

I have had the machine reboot after a print in the past, which would imply it was waiting for the machine to become idle after having downloaded an update detected when it was turned on. I don’t recall if it was after the print completed, or after I removed it and closed the lid. It has happened more than once.

It’s a Linux-based computer, it downloads and applies software updates using standard OS-based mechanisms. I do not believe, however, that it checks periodically while running - only while booting.

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