Firmware Release Notes

RockSTAR and YB3 handheld trackers

V03.15.04 (BETA)

Unread message indicator
Unread messages are indicated with an '*' icon. The icon is removed once a message is selected and read

Message timestamp
A timestamp is appended to the end of each message upon receipt.

Message Indicator (home screen)
The message received icon now displays two counters. The first number shows the total unread messages in your inbox. The second number, in brackets, indicates how many new messages have been received since you last accessed your inbox. For instance, if you see ✉️ 5 (1), it means there are 5 unread messages in total, with 1 new message received since your last visit.

Time of Day
The time of day is shown on the main screen (while the tracker is active).

Notifications
Sound and visual notifications are individually selectable (ON/OFF).

V03.15.03

Combines internal releases 03.15.00-03.15.02 for RockSTAR BURST.

Firmware releases for RockSTAR and YB3 Trackers will continue from 03.15.04.

RockSTAR BURST


V03.14.10

Internal (branched) release. Public-facing FW versions will skip this number and continue from v03.15.04


V03.14.09

Combined with internal releases 03.14.07

Heart Rate Sensor Correction
A connectivity issue has been resolved for certain devices that were failing to connect due to having a private MAC address.


V03.14.08

Internal (branched) release. Public-facing FW versions will skip this number and continue from v03.14.09


V03.14.07

Last Position Screen
A bug that displayed incorrect location data when in burst mode has been fixed.

Inbox Unread Messages
The Messages icon now appears only if new messages have been received since the inbox was last viewed, and the number of such unread messages is displayed next to the icon for easy identification.


V03.14.06

Internal (branched) release. Public-facing FW versions will skip this number and continue from v03.14.07


V03.14.05 (Current Public Release) - 11 Oct 2023

Combines internal releases 03.14.00 to 03.14.04

Polyfence
Improved performance of polyfence behaviour for trackers registering an elevation value below sea level.

V03.14.04

Burst Mode
Compact, no fix burst packet now assigned MO_5 type. (Previously erroneously assigned MO_50).
Burst Mode
Bug fix, preventing burst mode from creating an additional delta at midnight UTC.

V03.14.03

New Menu Structure
V03.14.00's improvements to on-screen menus applied to all logos, including RockStar, eXtrac, i360, YB Tracking and YB Rental. New menus documentation can be found here.

V03.14.02

Self-Test
Affects YB Rental MK2 (Pre-November 2014) trackers only
Self-test can pass when BLE module is not present.

V03.14.01

New Menu Structure
Improvements to on-screen menus for RockSTAR and YB Rental devices. New menu documentation can be found here.

Self-Test
Minor improvements/bug fixes

V03.14.00

New Menu Structure
Improvements to on-screen menus for YB Rental devices.

Message Mode
Message mode now has Bluetooth capabilities enabled by default


V03.13.02 - 24 Feb 2023

Combines internal releases 03.12.06 to 03.13.01.

Odometer
Corrected: This feature will no longer be available in the YB Rental configuration.

Self-Test
Corrected: Self-test was not setting configuration defaults upon completion.

Power Mode Option
Using the OTA packet protocol the power mode option can now be accessed via configuration record 2 (new) as well as record 6 (existing). The former is recommended as the latter may be deprecated at some future point.

V03.13.01

Odometer
The odometer option is now moved into the main menu where it provides a 'Start Measurement'/'Stop Measurement' toggle depending upon the current running state of the feature.

V03.13.00

Odometer
An odometer feature is introduced that will report the distance moved by the tracker between start and stop commands.
A unique generic alert event is sent to the Core for each of start/stop. In addition, when stopping, a new odometer packet (MO_25) is also sent which contains the odometer counter value in meters for the distance travelled since starting.

V03.12.08

Self-Test Retrying
A 'Repeat' option is now provided at the end of self-test so that testing can be repeated immediately if desired.

V03.12.07

'Message Only' Model - Pin Lock
Pin entry to access the 'Advanced' menu cannot be avoided.

V03.12.06

'Message Only' Model
An option to cancel 'Emergency Mode' is added to the Main menu.
This sends a confirmatory packet MO_17 (or MO_37).

The 'Advanced' option in the Main menu now requires the user pin to be entered in order to gain access (as long as the user pin is set to non-zero). The pin default is 1234, and any new value must be provided OTA.


V03.12.05 - 14 Jan 2022

Contacts Lists
Contact email character limit increased to 60 characters.
Improved reliability when importing contacts from SD card.

V03.12.04

Firmware Install
Corrected: Firmware installation issue introduced in V03.12.03

V03.12.03

Self Test
Further improvements to self-test feature.

V03.12.02

Self Test
Improvements to self-test feature.

V03.12.01

Internal Release

V03.12.00

Self Test
RockSTAR now performs the same self-test as RockFLEET and RockAIR. The self-test routine also produces a report which is stored on the SD card.

Mass Geofence Support
RockSTAR now supports unlimited geofences of unlimited size. (Note: Actually limited by size of tracker SD card).

OTA Position Request
Corrected: an OTA position request sometimes caused position reporting to cease.


V03.11.08 - 20 Oct 2020

Heart Rate Monitor Detection
Improved the reconnection of previously paired heart rate monitors when large numbers of heart rate monitors were present.


V03.11.07 - 31 Jul 2020

USB - File System Mounting
Improved the stability of mounting and un-mounting of the SD card.

Burst Context Transitions
Corrected a bug that caused the incorrect burst transmission settings to be used when the device switched between Satellite, Cellular or Distress context. A relatively rare scenario where if the device received an input that caused it to switch contexts at the same point the device completed a burst packet.


V03.11.06 - 13 Jul 2020

Large Messages
Corrected a scenario that caused queued messages after a certain size to be queue pending a future transmission event.
Usually only noticed when the device was set to transmit relatively infrequently as the transmission of position reports would clear the pending message packets.


V03.11.05 - 9 Jul 2020

Multi Message Dispatching
Corrected a scenario that resulted in only one message packet being dispatched with each position report.


V03.11.04 - 30 Jun 2020

Text Confirm Requests
Corrected a bug that prevented text messages that were delivered with a ‘read’ confirmation request from being deleted.


V03.11.03 - 27 May 2020

Heart Rate Sensor Out of Range
Sensor detection has been improved. Some sensors have a power-saving mode which reduces their advertising rate, e.g when out of connection for a long period. With the tracker using a low scan rate then detection of a device in such a mode would sometimes take an almost indefinite period:-
The tracker scanning rate is improved to be able to synchronise with any low sensor advertising rate more quickly (typically in under 10s).
If in some circumstances tracker scanning still fails to synchronise to sensor adverts then a 'backstop' is also introduced whereby every 60s the tracker temporarily scans continuously in an attempt to guarantee detection of any sensor regardless of its advertising mode.


V03.11.02 - 12 May 2020

Heart Rate Sensor
The following adjustments have been made to the heart rate monitoring feature:-

The option to set the averaging period is removed from the Bluetooth menu. The averaging period is now always fixed at 1 minute.
The averaging period is no longer needed in the transmitted heart rate profile data. It is replaced with a count of the number of BPM reports included in the profile. This profile has a new ID = 13 in order to distinguish it from previous heart rate profiles.

Corrected: Automatic reconnection to some heart rate monitor types, that had been previously paired, would often fail following a power cycle of the device (e.g. caused by battery replacement of the heart rate monitor).


V03.11.01 - 22 Apr 2020

Incorrectly accepting invalid GPRS settings
Corrected a bug that allowed RockSTARs to accept GPRS transmission settings despite not have a GPRS feature. This caused the device to transmit over Iridium with an incorrect transmission period if the device received one of these over the air commands. Only possible if you had implemented our protocol and sent incorrectly configured commands.


V03.11.00 - 6 Apr 2020

Leopard 3B PCB
The 3B board has additional USB hardware that must be enabled when USB is in use and disabled otherwise.

Burst Tx Rate Context Switching
If the transmission context was changed then the current burst packet could end up with deltas from the old and new settings leading to incorrect positions being displayed.

Distress/Routine Burst Settings
Corrected: If both distress and regular modes used burst settings then the correct setting was not always chosen when switching between the modes.

CSV Headers
Corrected: Occasionally the header line for a CSV file was omitted.

Deletion Of Contacts
Corrected a bug where the contacts were deleted when the ‘Messages/Remove All’ option is selected.


V03.10.05 - 22 Jan 2020

Heart Rate Sensor Battery Level feature
When the heart rate sensor feature is enabled then tracker reports will include the sensors' battery level (%) (if it is available) within the heart rate data.

The tracker will report a new heart rate data profile (0x0c) to the Core so as to differentiate it from the previous heart rate data profile (0x0b) which does not contain the battery level.


V03.10.04 - 19 Dec 2019

Heart Rate Sensor - Contact Error
Corrected: The contact error status for sensors that do not support the contact detection feature is now disregarded. This apparent status was causing the data provided by such sensors to be suppressed.

Note: Sensors that do support the contact detection feature will continue to report any contact error via a screen error indicator as they did previously.


V03.10.03 - 16 Sep 2019

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.10.02 - 8 May 2019

Automatic Language Selection
An alternative language is now automatically selected immediately following its download and installation.

The Settings/Language menu is still available to toggle between English and the alternate if required.


V03.10.01 - 30 Apr 2019

Encryption
Updates to the way encryption works


V03.10.00 - 1 Mar 2019

New IDE/Compiler
This release (as will be all subsequent releases from this point) is derived from a new IDE/compiler tool. The new tool has necessitated the introduction of replacement (but functionally equivalent) USB software.

There are no functional changes as compared to the previous 3.9.16 release with the following exception:-
Extended BLE advertising support


V03.09.16 - 7 Dec 2018

New message icon
Corrected: the icon (as described in release 3.9.13) was missing.

Log File Uploading
Corrected: the upload commands (as described in release 3.9.13) did not function.

Compact Burst Packets
Corrected: The deltas in compact burst packets were x10 their expected value, i.e. they were based upon latitude/longitude values of 5dp rather than the required 4dp.

SD Card Logs
Logging efficiency is improved for better capture of logs that occur just prior to a tracker reset.


V03.09.15 - 14 Nov 2018

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.09.14 - 8 Nov 2018

TX Wrapper corruption
Null messages in a transmitted wrapper packer, created by temporary loss of access to a packet queue on the SD card, are now suppressed.

MT Loss
Corrected a rare scenario where a received MT packet would be ignored if its corresponding MO transmission failed.


V03.09.13 - 26 Sep 2018

New message icon
Message in/out counters are replaced by an envelope icon which will be present when there are messages in the Tracker inbox.

Log File Uploading
The Tracker supports the following requests made via BLE remote commands in order to facilitate the upload of log files to the server via the app.

Request a list of log files from Tracker according to a date range.
Request location of hourly segments within a specified log file.
Request upload of file contents according to a start location and size.

Iridium Time Check
An iridium time check is now performed for the first transmission following tracker reset regardless of the Iridium module firmware version. This provides a potential recovery option for cases where the module appears to be 'lock out' of the Iridium network.

Geofence Malfunction
Corrected: The Geofence feature malfunctioned for distance settings of 50m or less, giving false fence exit/entry alerts. The feature is now a 'one shot' detection service, i.e. it will alert upon exit from the fenced area only and then switch off fence monitoring


V03.09.12 - 20 Jul 2018

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.09.11 - 16 Jul 2018

CONTEXT SETTINGS OVER BLE
The Tracker now provides BLE access to the Tracker transmit context (not transmitting, GPRS mode, Iridium SBD mode, distress mode)

Battery level
The battery volt level is no longer used to correct the charge level representation of a battery that has not reached full charge. Instead, the true, absolute battery charge level will always be presented


V03.09.10 - 22 May 2018

Heart Rate Monitor
Correction: The heart rate monitor was not listing potential pairing names in the 'Connection' list.
Correction: Activation of the heart rate monitor caused auto routine position reporting to stop.


V03.09.09 - 10 May 2018

Improved retry pattern
For transmission failure the subsequent retry timing pattern is improved so that initially there are many more and continuous attempts to recover, i.e. the tracker 'tries harder' immediately after the first failure and then relatively less 'hard' if the failure mode becomes extended over time. This improves the efficiency of the tracker making it more likely to succeed with a transmission if it has access to the sky and less likely to waste energy trying to transmit when it does not have access to the sky.

Emergency mode
Corrected: In Emergency Mode the transmit period would not switch to the 'distress' settings if the normal transmit period was set to burst mode.


V03.09.08 - 18 Apr 2018

BLE Beacon Detection
Corrected: Erratic BLE proximity detection (e.g multiple detect) of some beacons depending upon their ID number.


V03.09.07 - 28 Mar 2018

Position logging
The position logging feature has been changed in order to create CSV formatted files with positional information rather than XML formatted files.

Possible corruption of large packets
Correct a possible scenario where if the device was left trying to transmit for a long period of time without access to the sky then it was possible that the retry queue would get large enough that it would need to be stored on the SD card. If the device temporarily lost connection with the SD card then it could result in a corrupt packet.

Battery type selection
A battery type selection option is now provided in the Service\Battery menu in order to support newer Model B batteries.


V03.09.06 - 12 Feb 2018

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.09.05 - 9 Feb 2018

Language file support
Improved Language file support


V03.09.04 - 11 Jan 2018

Auto deactivation
Corrected a scenario where an auto deactivation triggered by a low battery level led to a state that potentially allowed processing of the transmit queue to recommence rather than being stopped due to deactivation.


V03.09.03 - 9 Jan 2018

Self-test mode
Improvements made to the internal self-test mode

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V03.09.02 - 9 Jan 2018

Messaging improvements
Messaging and Contact list feature are improved as follows:-

  • Message/contact presentation on an expanded screen was previously forced in case the text was too big for a single screen line. However, text expansion is now optional by using the right key.
  • Selection of a message destination via the 'Messages/To' menu now has the option of either choosing a contact from an existing list or otherwise choosing the default 'Preset Group'. The latter means that the message is sent to the server without containing any forwarding address.
    V03.09.01 - 10 Nov 2017
    BLE proximity detection
  • The proximity detection feature will now manage multiple beacons (up to 25 simultaneously) in its proximity zone. Once registered within the zone a beacon will only be deregistered when it has become absent for at least 1 minute. Registration IDs are collected and transmitted via MO_41/42 packets where, for efficiency, a packet can contain as many IDs as might have become available at the moment of transmission.

V03.09.00 - 30 Oct 2017

Contact list feature
A Contact List feature is now provided so that preset or screen typed messages can be directed to particular destinations like emails and SMS

Time zones
The options in the Time zone offset menu are extended with the addition of time zones UTC+13, UTC+14 and also UTC-13, UTC-14.


V03.08.05 - 5 Oct 2017

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.08.04 - 4 Oct 2017

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.08.03 - 28 Sep 2017

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings

V03.08.02 - 26 Sep 2017

BLE option selection
Correction: BLE modes iBeacon, Proximity and App would occasionally fail to be operational following selection.


V03.08.01 - 21 Sep 2017

Improved iBeacon support
iBeacon detection is generalised so that beacons that advertise according to the proximity beacon specification defined by Apple should now also be detected


V03.08.00 - 1 Sep 2017

iBeacon support
An iBeacon proximity feature is now fully available via the 'Bluetooth' menu. When the tracker is configured as a proximity detector then an approximate detection range can be set via a Beacon sensitivity option in the 'Advanced' menu.
A beacon detect packet is transmitted when the beacon is first 'seen'. Once seen then the beacon must be 'unseen' for 3 minutes before 'seen' can be repeated

Improvements transmission queue
Packet generation and packet transmission are now independent to eliminate/reduce the incidence of late/lost auto reports.
For transmission, packets are now queued (according to priority), retained and retried until they are sent.
A wrapper packet is introduced to maximise the contents of a single transmission when the transmission queue has multiple packets.
The configuration settings now have a reserve backup in non-volatile memory plus an SD card backup in order to guard against settings loss at low battery.
The main screen transmission progress indication at the screen bottom left is reconfigured using a transmission queue packet counter plus 'G' and 'I' icons that can be active simultaneously.


V03.07.02 - 18 Jul 2017

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.07.00 - 19 Jun 2017

Heart rate monitor feature
Support for BLE heart rate sensor functionality. The Bluetooth menu supports the selection of the sensor and management of connection/disconnection.


V03.06.10 - 21 Mar 201

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.06.09 - 29 Nov 2016

BLE app integration
The device can now be named over the air and the app can distinguish between different variants of the device.


V03.06.08 - 21 Nov 2016

Burst setting selection
Corrected a scenario where it was possible to not select the desired burst settings due to an error message.


V03.06.07 - 14 Nov 2016

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.06.05 - 4 Nov 2016

Improved transmit efficiency
Various changes made to the order in which the device communicates to the Iridium network making it more energy-efficient and quicker to transmit.

Time zone feature
A time zone offset feature is added that can adjust fix times presented in the History menus to a local time. Available in Advanced menu.

Self-test improvements
Various improvements made to the self-test functionality


V03.06.03 - 27 Oct 2016

Font support added
It is now possible to support alternative language fonts.

Messages waiting alert
Corrected: The reminder beep following a message receive did not repeat.

GPX file structure improved
GPX file structure is improved for compatibility with the majority of major tools.

Additional TX periods
Additional TX periods 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 24 hours have been added along with a new Burst Fix period of 20 mins.

Raw messaging
The BLE raw messaging feature can now be activated/deactivated over the air.

Missing GPS timestamp
Packets for alerts without a fix now have a date/time stamp provided by the internal RTC.
Regular automatic reports that do not have a fix are no longer queued for a retransmission attempt.

Polyfence improvement
Hysteresis around a polyfence boundary is increased from 10m to 50m to reduce possible false alerts due to GPS scatter.

Battery level improvements
Corrected: The battery level was occasionally misread resulting in zero or unrepresentative values being provided inside OTA packets.


V03.05.11 - 29 Jul 2016

Elevation added to GPX
Adds elevation to GPX file tracking point entries. The XML is now formatted with tabs & line ends and the file date stamp is now valid.


V03.05.10 - 25 Jul 2016

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings


V03.05.09 - 1 Jul 2016

Configuration settings
Updates to internal configuration settings

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V03.05.08 - 30 Jun 2016

Polyfence Improvements
General improvements made to the way the poly fence features work.