cnArcher v1.1 available for Android

You sure he’s not falling into the big/trap that is fixed in 15.2


@CSup wrote:
You sure he’s not falling into the big/trap that is fixed in 15.2

Jonathan, Can you post a screenshot of the screen in cnArcher where it gets stuck?

OK. 

Evidently cnArcher was still trying to manage my wifi settings. It would get to the point where it said switching to DHCP and then would hang because it couldnt see the SM.

I reset cleared all data and went through the setup again and told it i would manually manage wifi settings. So when it got to the point where it was hanging I turned off wifi and it connected to the cellular network and then cnArcher allowed me to onboard the device even though cnArcher could not talk to the SM. 

SUCCESS!

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@Jonathan Sulger wrote:

OK. 

Evidently cnArcher was still trying to manage my wifi settings. It would get to the point where it said switching to DHCP and then would hang because it couldnt see the SM.

I reset cleared all data and went through the setup again and told it i would manually manage wifi settings. So when it got to the point where it was hanging I turned off wifi and it connected to the cellular network and then cnArcher allowed me to onboard the device even though cnArcher could not talk to the SM. 

SUCCESS!


Glad to hear, Jonathan. We will make the status messages clearer for this case, so you know where exactly the app is stuck.

I have another question. 

We will sometimes reuse a SM that we have removed from a customer that has moved or no longer needs our service. We will reset the SM to factory default and then use it at a new install. I have noticed that if that SM has not been deleted from cnMaestro then cnArcher will display that the SM has been onboarded already and does not allow cnArcher to do this. So once the cnArcher process is completed the SM that has been reused comes active again in cnMaestro but has the old/incorrect information. Also the new template never gets applied to the SM. It sees the new IP address and the site name information but because cnArcher cannot onboard it the template cannot be selected and thus never gets applied to the SM once finished.

Again, we are trying to automate this so that the installer can complete the process without assistance from the office. Are we going to need to delete the SM from cnMaestro before cnArcher can be used to install it at another site?


@Jonathan Sulger wrote:

I have another question. 

We will sometimes reuse a SM that we have removed from a customer that has moved or no longer needs our service. We will reset the SM to factory default and then use it at a new install. I have noticed that if that SM has not been deleted from cnMaestro then cnArcher will display that the SM has been onboarded already and does not allow cnArcher to do this. So once the cnArcher process is completed the SM that has been reused comes active again in cnMaestro but has the old/incorrect information. Also the new template never gets applied to the SM. It sees the new IP address and the site name information but because cnArcher cannot onboard it the template cannot be selected and thus never gets applied to the SM once finished.

Again, we are trying to automate this so that the installer can complete the process without assistance from the office. Are we going to need to delete the SM from cnMaestro before cnArcher can be used to install it at another site?


For now, you will have to delete the SM from cnMaestro. We will add this functionality in a future release. 

Any update on it or when you can split cnmaestro to a seperate step from the provision/align/firmware steps that we can continue later?


@CSup wrote:
Any update on it or when you can split cnmaestro to a seperate step from the provision/align/firmware steps that we can continue later?

This will be part of v1.2 in Q3, 2018.

We are ramping down v1.1 development. Expect one more update with 2 additions.

- Add photos to installation summary

- Allow SM upgrade using firmware image stored on the phone

We plan to release v1.1 in July and start v1.2 beta soon after that.

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Ok hopefully with the next update of 1.1 we can do firmware upgrade+direct configuration and just not do cnmaestro for now and will leave cnmaestro part to our office staff for now.


That way 15.2 and 1.1 the installers can do a clean install and alignment etc without issues

It looks like when doing a quick align and you press the check alignment button it unchecks all of the frequencies except the current frequency but it never rechecks all the frequencies when finished. Not sure the purpose of selecting just the one frequency at this point instead of leaving them all enabled.

Before starting the process

After pressing the check alignment button and also after finishing the process.

This has caught me a few times when we did frequency changes and had to go out and enable all frequencies before it would connect back to the AP that had a new frequency before I realized what was happening.

Jonathan,

That sounds like a bug. We will investigate.

For the normal SM install flow, the app does trim the scan list during alignment. This is done so that if the installer turns the SM away from the AP, causing it ti drop the session, it reconnects as son as it is turned back. Without this, th SM would scan the complete scan list before reconnecting, and this may take minutes. Also, as soon as the installer click the "Run Link Test" button, the scan list is restrored using what was configured in the app settings.

In "Quick Align" mode, the app is not supposed to make any configuration changes on the SM, including the scan list. But based on your experiance, it is.

Any news on the next release saw 15.2 released and hoping the final version of 1.1 will get us far enough with 15.2 to do firmware and basic installs even if not cnmaestro for now.


@CSup wrote:
Any news on the next release saw 15.2 released and hoping the final version of 1.1 will get us far enough with 15.2 to do firmware and basic installs even if not cnmaestro for now.

This is possible now if you are signed up for the beta. Verify you are running v1.1.11 of cnArcher. Then, while connected to the internet, open "Settings > Software Images", click the "Refresh" icon on top right, and you should see "PMP CANOPY 15.2" version. Click the "Download" icon next to it. 

When installing the SM, on the first page, where it shows the details of the connected SM, touch the software version string to open the page to select new software version to ugrade. Select 15.2 there.

Oh i know but their was an issue in current beta with firmware upgrade you guys confirmed area related to upgrading firmware directly from the app when cnmaestro isnt being used for the install

CSup,

Please review section titled "Upgrade/Downgrade SM Firmware" at http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/cnArcher/cnArcher-v1-1-beta-available-for-Android/m-p/86365#M86. Let me know if that is different that what you are looking for. This enhancement was part of v1.1.11 update on June 21st.

With this, the installer can upgrade the SM image using cnArcher, with or without cnMaestro.

Ok number of things observed on latest version with 15.2 firmware.

1. (IMPORTANT) Default should be to recommend upgrade to latest version (Recommended version), if an installer clicks next and the latest version != installed version, it should ask "do you want to install latest version before continue, highly recommended yes/no"

2. (BREAKING) Alternative IP should be automatically enabled, once again i lost access during the install, i had to login with browser and turn on Alternative IP, that way the dhcp my network gives the SM when it connects doesn't kill the app connection, this is a big issue, and without it breaks the install flow, if you don't want to make it the default for every install of cnArcher make it configurable via the settings menu of the app/qr.

3. (BREAKING) After doing the alignment during the install process it takes a LONG time to restore the channels, i actually logged in via web to check what was taking so long and only part of the 5.4 channels had been restored, waited another 2-3 minutes and the radio connected to network and went to link test page, when i went to the radio page on my browser i observed 5.4-5.7 was enabled as per my settings but that random channels were missing from the scan list.

4. (MINOR) During the upgrade to 15.2 the app started saying "please reconnect to sm wifi, waiting for reboot, please reconnect to sm wifi", it seemed like perhaps the timer for the error was too short as i think 15.2 takes a bit to startup after upgrade, eventually the radio came up (was monitoring via ping on laptop via the wifi dongle), and then i clicked ok again and it found the radio was upgraded, and continued with install was quite annoying, perhaps better way to handle vs just throwing an, retry message or just extend the wait time before error.

5. (MINOR) On the blackberry we were using today (Android) we had to disable the 4g on the phone to get access to the radio, tried both with automatic config and manual wifi config with an ip set on the wifi profile... when we disabled 4g it seemed to work, not sure if this is just this version of android/model phone but was a head-scratcher, think it may have been some form of "smart routing" that saw no internet via wifi, so was disabling the 169.254.1.0/24 route because the 4g had internet.

6. (IMPORTANT) Ability would greatly be appreciated to set an "auto-report email" and that once the installer clicks "done" at the end of install the report would just get sent to that email address, vs having to use a "share" for each install, as the share method makes it seem optional, and I can imagine most of our networks want these reports to be sent as a requirement.

7. (MINOR) Add ability to require X pictures, before an installer can click done, maybe in settings just something that says "Require X pictures per install" that way at end if the installer clicks done, and forgot to take a picture it will say something like "pictures required to submit report", would really be nice QOL adjustment.

8. (MINOR) The report should really have start and end timestamps converted to readable date/times instead of sending bare unix timestamps

9. (IMPORTANT) Would be really nice if the AP-Eval could be included in the report, so we can see in the office if the installer really did pick the best option, or if their were alternatives during the install.

10. (MINOR) Subject of report email (auto or share) should really have a title like say Installation Summary - Customer Name - ESN, so when it comes time for the management to look up a device they can see right away from the titles who the install was for instead of looking through whats basically a config dump.

11. (IMPORTANT) Link Test mode/throughputs are only showing the last test I think, we did 3 tests (1 extra and 2 bridged, and only 1 showed up in the report), also would be good if the app had a setting to set what the default link test type should be.

12. (IMPORTANT) Possibly making an option to have either a dumped report like it is now or a bit nicer formatted html report, as the current report really gives me flashbacks of the standard apeval page, no reason the report can't be set as an option to be html formatted to look and be more visible to the company reviewers, would also allow for things like not having 1 link test spread onto 4 lines

13. (MINOR) Link Test Modulation Down in the report shows as blank.

 I Know the above is a lot of complaints, but i must say the latest beta is the first time i've made it through af ull install with cnArcher, and its really starting to shape up, but its got some small glaring issues that once cleaned up/fixed really could be amazing, and most of them seem to be small easily fixed issues.

2 Likes

CSup, Thank you for the detailed feedback. Our plan is to evolve cnArcher to enforce policies and installation criteria so that the WISP has more visibility and control of the installs. This is inline with some of the feedback below. We will also look at how we can integrated with cnMaestro to streamline this.
Please see more comments inline.


@CSup wrote:

Ok number of things observed on latest version with 15.2 firmware.

1. (IMPORTANT) Default should be to recommend upgrade to latest version (Recommended version), if an installer clicks next and the latest version != installed version, it should ask "do you want to install latest version before continue, highly recommended yes/no"

Will add this request to the v1.2 list.

2. (BREAKING) Alternative IP should be automatically enabled, once again i lost access during the install, i had to login with browser and turn on Alternative IP, that way the dhcp my network gives the SM when it connects doesn't kill the app connection, this is a big issue, and without it breaks the install flow, if you don't want to make it the default for every install of cnArcher make it configurable via the settings menu of the app/qr.

We are not able to recreate this. Alternate IP is automatically enabled as part of configuring network settings. Can you send us the debug logs when this happens? Also, when you start, is the SM in factory default configuration?

3. (BREAKING) After doing the alignment during the install process it takes a LONG time to restore the channels, i actually logged in via web to check what was taking so long and only part of the 5.4 channels had been restored, waited another 2-3 minutes and the radio connected to network and went to link test page, when i went to the radio page on my browser i observed 5.4-5.7 was enabled as per my settings but that random channels were missing from the scan list.

We can recreate this. Happens with longer scan lists. It will be fixed.

4. (MINOR) During the upgrade to 15.2 the app started saying "please reconnect to sm wifi, waiting for reboot, please reconnect to sm wifi", it seemed like perhaps the timer for the error was too short as i think 15.2 takes a bit to startup after upgrade, eventually the radio came up (was monitoring via ping on laptop via the wifi dongle), and then i clicked ok again and it found the radio was upgraded, and continued with install was quite annoying, perhaps better way to handle vs just throwing an, retry message or just extend the wait time before error.

We don’t see this, but will review how long the app waits. Again, it is useful to know if you are starting from factory default configuration or not.

5. (MINOR) On the blackberry we were using today (Android) we had to disable the 4g on the phone to get access to the radio, tried both with automatic config and manual wifi config with an ip set on the wifi profile... when we disabled 4g it seemed to work, not sure if this is just this version of android/model phone but was a head-scratcher, think it may have been some form of "smart routing" that saw no internet via wifi, so was disabling the 169.254.1.0/24 route because the 4g had internet.

Newer versions on Android on some phones will not use the Wi-Fi connection if it is not able to detect internet connection. We will add a warning asking users to try and turn off 4G.

6. (IMPORTANT) Ability would greatly be appreciated to set an "auto-report email" and that once the installer clicks "done" at the end of install the report would just get sent to that email address, vs having to use a "share" for each install, as the share method makes it seem optional, and I can imagine most of our networks want these reports to be sent as a requirement.

We are planning to upload the installation summary to cnMaestro so the administrator has access to details of every installation. Will this meet your requirement (as an alternate to automated emails)?

7. (MINOR) Add ability to require X pictures, before an installer can click done, maybe in settings just something that says "Require X pictures per install" that way at end if the installer clicks done, and forgot to take a picture it will say something like "pictures required to submit report", would really be nice QOL adjustment.

This will be part of the "Installation Criteria" feature, but no dates for this yet.

8. (MINOR) The report should really have start and end timestamps converted to readable date/times instead of sending bare unix timestamps

This will be fixed before we release v1.1.

9. (IMPORTANT) Would be really nice if the AP-Eval could be included in the report, so we can see in the office if the installer really did pick the best option, or if their were alternatives during the install.

Good point. We will add this in the next release (v1.2)

10. (MINOR) Subject of report email (auto or share) should really have a title like say Installation Summary - Customer Name - ESN, so when it comes time for the management to look up a device they can see right away from the titles who the install was for instead of looking through whats basically a config dump.

Will add this to the next release (v1.2)

11. (IMPORTANT) Link Test mode/throughputs are only showing the last test I think, we did 3 tests (1 extra and 2 bridged, and only 1 showed up in the report), also would be good if the app had a setting to set what the default link test type should be.

Will add link test type to the next release. Also, instead of a setting for default link test, app will remember the last one used. Is that OK?

12. (IMPORTANT) Possibly making an option to have either a dumped report like it is now or a bit nicer formatted html report, as the current report really gives me flashbacks of the standard apeval page, no reason the report can't be set as an option to be html formatted to look and be more visible to the company reviewers, would also allow for things like not having 1 link test spread onto 4 lines

Will wait for more feedback on this. While it is easy to convert the contents to HTML, some customers may want to scan the email and dump it into a database, which is easier if it is text and the format does not keep changing as we try to make it look nicer. We will definitely have a GUI display once we start sending the install summary to cnMaestro.

13. (MINOR) Link Test Modulation Down in the report shows as blank.

Downlink modulation is not yet available on the SM to read via SNMP, but it is planned for future.

 I Know the above is a lot of complaints, but i must say the latest beta is the first time i've made it through af ull install with cnArcher, and its really starting to shape up, but its got some small glaring issues that once cleaned up/fixed really could be amazing, and most of them seem to be small easily fixed issues.


I appreciate your patience, especially with the VLAN issue and having to wait for both 15.2 release as well as the ability in the app to upgrade to 15.2. Please keep the feedback coming.

@Rajesh_V

@CSup

2. (BREAKING) Alternative IP should be automatically enabled, once again i lost access during the install, i had to login with browser and turn on Alternative IP, that way the dhcp my network gives the SM when it connects doesn't kill the app connection, this is a big issue, and without it breaks the install flow, if you don't want to make it the default for every install of cnArcher make it configurable via the settings menu of the app/qr.

We are not able to recreate this. Alternate IP is automatically enabled as part of configuring network settings. Can you send us the debug logs when this happens? Also, when you start, is the SM in factory default configuration?

Yes it was in default, we had factory defaulted the radio before starting i can try again and see if it happens again, but for sure the time we did it from factory default it did it at least once it didn't enable Alternate IP and stopped the install which is a big issue

4. (MINOR) During the upgrade to 15.2 the app started saying "please reconnect to sm wifi, waiting for reboot, please reconnect to sm wifi", it seemed like perhaps the timer for the error was too short as i think 15.2 takes a bit to startup after upgrade, eventually the radio came up (was monitoring via ping on laptop via the wifi dongle), and then i clicked ok again and it found the radio was upgraded, and continued with install was quite annoying, perhaps better way to handle vs just throwing an, retry message or just extend the wait time before error.

We don't see this, but will review how long the app waits. Again, it is useful to know if you are starting from factory default configuration or not.

Yes we were factory defaulted 

6. (IMPORTANT) Ability would greatly be appreciated to set an "auto-report email" and that once the installer clicks "done" at the end of install the report would just get sent to that email address, vs having to use a "share" for each install, as the share method makes it seem optional, and I can imagine most of our networks want these reports to be sent as a requirement.

We are planning to upload the installation summary to cnMaestro so the administrator has access to details of every installation. Will this meet your requirement (as an alternate to automated emails)?

While doing that is nice, I think having install criteria that require an email to auto-send would be a great option, especially if opting out of cnMaestro on the install side, in reality, there should be an options in settings, auto-send report email <yes/no> with email address field and auto-report to cnMaestro <yes/no> Allowing the company to choose what reporting scheme is best for them

7. (MINOR) Add ability to require X pictures, before an installer can click done, maybe in settings just something that says "Require X pictures per install" that way at end if the installer clicks done, and forgot to take a picture it will say something like "pictures required to submit report", would really be nice QOL adjustment.

This will be part of the "Installation Criteria" feature, but no dates for this yet.

Installation Criteria/Requirements sounds like a great thing/feature as I imagine i can't be the only one battling with poor reporting from technicians during installs 

11. (IMPORTANT) Link Test mode/throughputs are only showing the last test I think, we did 3 tests (1 extra and 2 bridged, and only 1 showed up in the report), also would be good if the app had a setting to set what the default link test type should be.

Will add link test type to the next release. Also, instead of a setting for default link test, app will remember the last one used. Is that OK?

Remembering the type is definitely enough

12. (IMPORTANT) Possibly making an option to have either a dumped report like it is now or a bit nicer formatted html report, as the current report really gives me flashbacks of the standard apeval page, no reason the report can't be set as an option to be html formatted to look and be more visible to the company reviewers, would also allow for things like not having 1 link test spread onto 4 lines

Will wait for more feedback on this. While it is easy to convert the contents to HTML, some customers may want to scan the email and dump it into a database, which is easier if it is text and the format does not keep changing as we try to make it look nicer. We will definitely have a GUI display once we start sending the install summary to cnMaestro.

While I understand what your saying and can see what your trying to accomplish, it's not really great, having a text dump is really not perfect for devs nor for Managers, Managers want a nice clean email to read which the text result currently isn't, and developers want a structured dump (json/yaml). What I'd say is its just a formatting issue, would be easy enough to have a setting that can be set to an email type, dev template = dump to json in email, html template = nice with some light CSS to make the email not a pain to look at for management/supervisors. This sort of feels like one of those "we don't want to bloat the 450 ui to make it nicer to look at because..." to the point a guy had to write a chrome extension to modernize it that probably everyone has to install to make the apeval window useable lol

As for the GUI in cnMaestro for reporting while that's a nice one for looking back at the install from the SM when it was first installed, it doesn't solve the immediate need for supervisors to see the daily reports and how the installer is performing on a day-to-day basis.


@CSup wrote:

@Rajesh_V

@CSup

While I understand what your saying and can see what your trying to accomplish, it's not really great, ...


OK you win. v1.2 will have html formated email and json attachment.

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Lol now I feel like you don’t like me anymore :stuck_out_tongue: