The Mistake Operators Keep Making

 I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen an operator get burned by an update. It’s happened to me more than once as well—often enough that I finally adopted a new philosophy several years ago.

The scenario is usually the same. A shiny new firmware or software update drops right before an event you’re supporting or participating in. You install it, thinking you’re being responsible… only to discover that something is broken. A feature no longer works, menus have been rearranged, or behavior has subtly changed. Suddenly your radio, Meshtastic device, or computer is in a less-than-ideal state—and that’s on a good day.

To be fair to programmers, I don’t believe there’s ever any malicious intent behind these updates. As a programmer myself, I know how easily things can slip through the cracks. No matter how much testing is done, there’s always an edge case that wasn’t anticipated.

Which brings me back to the philosophy I adopted years ago: the two-week freeze.

For the two weeks leading up to an event, nothing—and I mean nothing—gets updated. No system updates. No software updates. No firmware updates. Don’t touch the radios. Don’t touch the computers. The only exception is programming a new frequency into a rig, and even then, only if it’s absolutely required for the event.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

One System Shined. One Fell Short. Guess Which?

 

Our city’s Christmas parade always feels like controlled chaos—and this year was no exception. A tremendous amount of work goes into both the planning and the execution, but events like this are a fantastic real-world demonstration of just how much can be accomplished over RF.

Overall, it was a big success, though we definitely came away with a few lessons learned. And honestly, if you aren’t learning something during an event like this, you’re probably not paying close enough attention. There’s always room for improvement 🙂 Rather than diving into every detail here, a few highlights are worth sharing:

• Our digital data transfer system worked almost flawlessly—again.

• Everything ran completely without internet access.

• All systems were powered by emergency power.

• Meshtastic didn’t perform quite as well as I’d hoped.

• APRS continues to shine for events like this.

• Always have a backup plan… for your backup plan.

If you’re interested, you can read the full after-action report. It’s a living document, so a few tweaks may still happen as additional thoughts come up, but it’s about 97% complete.

Sometimes it's just weird

 

Sometimes, computers just act up for no apparent reason. Yep — even Linux machines.

This morning, Bluetooth was working perfectly one minute… and completely missing the next. Bluetooth had gone astray. It’s happened before, and usually, a quick Bluetooth service restart fixes it. Not today.

Alright, no problem — time for the classic full system reboot. Still nothing. 🤔

At this point, I started to wonder if the Bluetooth card itself had failed. To test that theory, I booted from a USB drive running Linux Mint 22.1. (Booting into a live environment is a great way to check hardware — I often do this to verify Linux recognizes things like the sound card, WiFi, etc before installing.)

Sure enough, Bluetooth worked just fine in the live environment. That told me the hardware was fine and the issue had to be with the installed OS. “No biggie,” I thought — I’ve got backups.

I shut down the live session, which did a full power-off, and booted back into my regular Mint OS install to restore from backup. But to my surprise… Bluetooth was working again!

Apparently, a full shutdown — not just a reboot — was what the system needed.

Sometimes, computers are just weird. 🤷‍♂️