CENTAURI Software Release Notes

Latest SW release notes (post Feb 2024) can be found here

Release 5.20.0

Release Date: 6 November 2024

GUI (DMD)

• Add support for device names

SNMP

• Add device name OID

• Include device name (if configured) in traps

Release 5.19.0

UI 

• Show laser position on DMD to allow user to verify alignment
• Show expected Laser Tx value
• Added a button to download logs
• Added a ‘Viewer’ user login with restricted access to features

SNMP 

• Added numerous new metrics and Traps that can be polled over SNMP
• Added support for multiple trap servers

Additions to v5.19.1 : 

UI

• Show Laser position even if alignment is not complete

SNMP

• Update descriptions in the MIB file

Additions for v5.19.2 : 

UI 

• Improved laser position during alignment

Release 5.18.0

PAT

• Made improvements to the APC signalling

Logging

• Made improvements to internal logging file structures

Local GUI (DMD)

• Allow user to select first device/ second device during alignment irrespective of link state

• Turn On heater automatically after alignment

• Show status of window heater and maintenance mode on home screen 

Release 5.17.0

PAT

• Add support for new scintillation mitigation hardware with APC

APIs

• Add endpoints for generating diagnostics reports

• Clear logs, configs, and databases during factory reset

• Fix a bug during the setting of link state

Local GUI (DMD)

• Fix a dialog bug

Logging

• Update telemetry logging service.

• Change in the URL where the telemetry logs are streamed to. 

Patch update 5.17.1

PAT

• Fix memory issue that occurs when diagnostics checks are performed by Transcelestial

Release 5.16.0

PAT

• Improve APC performance responsiveness by refactoring beacon comms.

• Improve APC performance by decreasing ramp down time and improve memory usage.

APIs

• Ensure the camera diagnostics API does not fail 

• Add internal APIs for generating diagnosis reports 

Patch update 5.16.1

PAT

• Fix a bug in the beacon comms. 

Patch update 5.16.2

PAT

• Fixes the issue where the encoders/gimbal need to be recalibrated and improve alignment process.

Patch update 5.16.3

Tools

• Ensures results are updated after the internal fine tuning tool is executed.

Patch update 5.16.4

PAT

• Fix AEC decision in edge cases where gain is high

• Fix brightness prediction in AEC

Patch update 5.16.5

PAT

• Fix an infinite recursion in AEC when the beacon is too dim

Release 5.15.0

Release Date: 13 June 2024

• Improve AEC in scintillation
• Improve compute and memory resource usage in PAT
• Improve the accuracy of the link status calculation

Patch update 5.15.1

Diagnostics

• This release fixes a false positive in the diagnostics checks.

Patch update 5.15.2

Diagnostics

• This release fixes false spikes in gyro logs.

Patch update 5.15.3

PAT

• Fixes tracking error in PAT.

Patch update 5.15.4

PAT & System Checks

• This release improves link recovery during rain events and also automatically detects and restarts if software service is down for whatever reason.

Patch update 5.15.5

PAT 

• This release APC increases the median offset range.

Release 5.14.0

Release Date: 22nd April 2024

This version streamlines the operational procedures when links require specific power configs due to environmental factors that the CENTAURI software cannot dynamically adjust. It also introduces changes which will allow for future performance improvements to be rolled out faster and more reliably

Performance Improvements

• Improve CPU performance by reducing recurring peaks of 20%

Bug Fixes

• Ensure the critical services start after any automatic, distance based, power configuration changes occur

• Gracefully handle timeouts in the vision sensor frame capture after time synchronisation
• Improve the responsiveness of the DMD application
• Improve the resiliency to errors when running the camera stream during alignment

Features

• Add the ability to switch between different AEC algorithms at runtime to allow for faster performance improvements updates
• Implement multi-layer configs to streamline device configuration updates for the Transcelestial Solutions and Services team

Release 5.13.0

Release Date: 7th March 2024

This version brings important performance improvements in terms of the APC (Automatic Power Control) responsiveness and we recommend updating to this version for a better link experience during rain.

Performance Improvements

• Enhanced the responsiveness of APC during onset rain, which should in turn reduce the packet loss and reduce the incidence of early link loss during rain.

Bug Fixes

• Mitigated a DMD error that resulted in a blank screen on the camera view screen during the alignment, when refreshing the DMD app using the browser refresh button

• Resolved a DMD issue that occurred when canceling the alignment and which would require a device reboot to recover from

Features

• Allow users to configure the NTP servers from within the DMD

Release 5.12.0

Release Date: 7th Jan 2024

This software release brings important and critical performance improvements and it is mandatory that any device running on older versions are upgraded to this version.

Critical Bug Fixes For Performance Enhancement

1. Fixes an issue in the internal vision sensor driver, which lead to the use of invalid exposure settings and cause random remote device tracking failures. This improves the tracking and therefore is expected to deliver better SLA performance on the link as compared to previous SW versions.
2. Fixes an issue in the internal vision sensor driver, where the calculation of the captured region of interest at times may be inaccurate, which can result in a significant degradation of link quality. This does not affect all devices and links but the resolution of this bug ensures link quality does not degrade due to this bug in the vision sensor.

Release 5.10.0 

Release Date: 16th Jan 2024

DMD

• Store alignment alignment configs on the device sequentially, instead of using timestamps.

• Resolve some UI bugs.

• Added a button to download alignment data.

• Show progress bar when attempting a link alignment.
  
  

Tools: 

• Add internal CLI commands to audit and check device configs as well as SW updates
  
  
  

Release 5.9.0

Release Date: 19th December 2023

Tools

• Add command (internal) to switch to new vision sensor drivers

• Add a diagnostic command to check motor current
  
  

PAT: 

• Improve error handling in internal communication with laser source

• Expose motor current values

• Fix a race condition in the vision system

• Add support for new vision drivers

• Log additional metrics

• Fix a vision sensor stuck condition

Release 5.8.1 

Release Date: 27th November 2023

PAT

• Reduce the time it takes to find the remote beacon after a loss of LoS event

Release 5.8

Release Date: 18th November 2023

DMD

• Display an error when the software update fails due to timeout 

• Improve laser safety class 1M messaging

Software Updates

• Retry software updates when they fail due to bad network connections

SNMP

• Expose SFP rx/tx metrics

• Report the same laser output metric that the Grafana dashboards report

Release 5.7 

Release Date: 6th November 2023

DMD

• Add toggle for enabling/disabling CENTAURI laser class 1M  

• Extend SSL certificate to 10 years

• Fix a minor issue on the alignment link check screen that shows the progress when an error occurs

Health checks

• Monitor the RTC battery state and report it as an error code on DMD if any issue

PAT

• Add an APR (Automatic Power Reduction) control system to enable CENTAURI laser class 1M 

Release 5.6.2 

Release Date: 18th October 2023

DMD

• Allow using the DMD on devices on a few isolated cases where the OS clock goes out of sync

Release 5.6.1 

Release Date: 10th October 2023

Tools

• Fix an exception when running the vision sensor check

Release 5.6.0

Release Date: 5th October 2023

Health checks

• Add a periodic check for the beacon laser

Diagnostics

• Log additional metrics when enabling diagnostics mode in PAT 

PAT

• Fix another vision sensor deadlock edge case

Release 5.5.0 

Release Date: 15th September 2023

Health checks

• Add an internal API for checking the top 10 CPU-intensive processes 

PAT

• Improve logging when exceptions occur 

• Fix a vision sensor deadlock edge case 

• Improve the beacon detection algorithm to ignore external light sources that may not be the remote beacon

Release 5.4.0 [Major]

Release Date: 4th September 2023

DMD

Alignment

• Allow alignment to continue if the diagnostics checks fail for non-critical reasons

• Improve the user experience when alignment fails

Configuration

• Adjust the laser source and beacon power range configs for long distances 

Health checks

• Improve internal logging 

• Automatically restart the device in case of critical laser source failures 

• Increase unit test coverage 

• Run the disk space clear action as many times as needed whenever the usage goes above the threshold 

Diagnostics

• Increase the beacon voltage check thresholds 

• Fix a resource allocation issue that causes an unrecoverable failure to occur when communicating with the laser source 

• Handle power diagnostic check errors 

PAT

• Fix incorrect beacon power output in certain configuration modes 

• Improve dew point calculation algorithm 

• Allow the laser source comms to recover after a failure during API queries 

• Enable diagnostics imaging when the PAT configuration enables it

• Recover when a critical failure occurs while trying to communicate with the vision sensor

• Take additional diagnostics imaging when PAT is compensating aggressively if enabled

SNMP

• Notify the SNMP trap server that the device maintenance mode has changed

Release 5.3.3 [Patch]

Release Date: 28th August 2023

DMD

Alignment

• Fix another edge case for incorrect reporting of alignment status as “Not Aligned“ after a software update to v5 

• Ensure the hardware configuration is done correctly before running diagnostics checks during an alignment 

• Fix false positive shown errors during alignment 

• Fix inconsistent use of “Abort“/”Cancel” alignment throughout the alignment process 

• Update the messaging for process duration throughout the alignment 

Health checks

• Increase the beacon voltage check thresholds 

Release 5.3.2 [Patch]

Release Date: 24th August 2023

DMD

General

• Fix incorrect reporting of link status in the sys check, monitoring tools, and link status card 

Alignment

• Fix incorrect reporting of alignment status as “Not Aligned“ after a software update to v5 when an alignment happened on a v4 software version 

• Remove obsolete “Calibrate“ functionality at the end of an alignment 

Configuration

• Adjust the beacon power range for short distances to increase the beacon lifetime 

PAT

• Fix a performance degradation that occurs while PAT is running in fine-tracking mode

Release 5.3.1 [Patch]

Release Date: 20th August 2023

Configuration

• Ensure the data laser power range config is always computed based on the device model

SNMP

• Improve reliability for comms with internal services 

Tools

• Ensure Cencat returns all current PAT configs

Release 5.3.0 

Release Date: 12th August 2023

Configuration

• Update laser source and beacon power configs to increase the lifetime of the beacon 

• Automatically update the hardware configs on boot based on the alignment distance

• Fix the vision sensor check thresholds 

PAT

• Add additional logging to help debug AEC issues 

• Fix the beacon control loop maxing out the beacon power 

• Fix incorrect API service logging

• Adjust the beacon control loop to optimize for lifetime 

• Improve link recovery time when the remote beacon is lost and the PAT transitions from fine to coarse tracking 

Software Updates

• Increase the software update process timeout to 25 minutes to prevent slow downloads from breaking the update process 

Release 5.2.0 

Release Date: 1st August 2023

General

• Ensure the layout doesn’t break when multiple error codes are displayed

Configuration

• Fix API and internal diagnostics tool crash when setting device config with partial configs

Health checks

• Test for packet fragmentation on the management port 

• Do not run automatic recovery actions more than once when errors are reported 

• the Fix VPN connection - check the authentication 

• Fix false positive errors for link tx power and temperature checks 

• Cleanup disk when available disk space goes under a certain threshold 

PAT

• Improve the transition from coarse to fine-tracking 

• Improve the AEC performance 

OS

• Fix incorrect log rotation config 

Release 5.1.1 [Patch]

Release Date: 20th July 2023

PAT

• Ensure API responses that have no data don’t cause clients to crash

Release 5.1.0

Release Date: 15th July 2023

Alignment

• Fix issues with false positive errors during alignment

• Fix first/second device messaging on the vision sensor view screen 

Settings

• Ensure that the device restart action completes and reloads the window

Diagnostics

• Add a check for the gimbal motors

OS

• Allow Transcelestial technical support to enable clients to install beta software updates 

PAT

• Prevent the API from getting into a deadlock/stuck when the laser source is slow in responding to requests 

• Fix issues with duplicate logging fields of different types causing the logging infrastructure to reject all PAT logs

Release 5.0 [Major]

Release Date: 1st July 2023

Release 5.0 brings a number of important improvements to the deployment experience, including the ability to set up CENTAURI links from start to finish (including calibration) when there is no internet connectivity available on site.

Along with these improvements, we’ve added new features like the ability to run software updates when they’re available (this still requires connectivity to Transcelestial servers), to turn CENTAURI’s window heater on or off, and to run a factory reset or restart the device from within the DMD app. There is also a heap of updates and improvements to CENTAURI's SNMP implementation.

Several bug fixes patched in version 4.2 are now permanent features that will help reduce the likelihood of component failures and improve link resiliency.

DMD App

General

• Remove the calibration (fine-tune) feature
• Add the ability to check for and run a software update, when available (requires an internet connection)
• Indicate the device connection status in the app top navigation bar
• Improvements to UX based on users' feedback

Alignment

• Automate PAT config updates for laser source, beacon and vision sensor, based on link distance.

• Automate enabling APC during alignment

• Run hardware diagnostics before showing the vision sensor stream screen during alignment.

• Detect vibration during alignment and report to user if a link cannot be established.

• Check if there’s high scintillation when trying to establish a link; Report to user if scintillation detected

• Run vision sensor focus checks after coarse alignment

• Check and calibrate optics post coarse alignment (without the need for an internet connection)

• Show the target within the vision sensor view screen based on the laser source/rx position.

Health checks and Status Reporting

• Report error codes for all statuses (device, link and data/SFP status)

• Report the alignment status as part of the link status

• Report the link status based on the rx laser power and according to the laser specs generated during manufacturing.

• Add more detailed checks for link status, and data/SFP link status

• Check and report memory, disk and CPU status as part of device health checks.

• Detect if the vision sensor is in a deadlock and restart the device when this issue is detected.

Troubleshooting

• Add basic troubleshooting and support guides to the DMD app

Settings

• Break device settings into separate cards according to device info, general and hardware settings.

• Add settings for enabling/disabling the window heater

• Add actions for running a factory reset and restarting the device

Networking

• Reduce the MTU size to 1280 on the management port, to accommodate a broader client base.

• Remove TCT factory default DNS address from the DNS entries

• Do not use ARPING for static IP allocation

• Fix an edge case where the TCT VPN registration service does not run when a conflicting IP responds on the network during a ping

SNMP

• Monitor essential internal processes and report if they’re down

• Improve the laser source tx query resiliency

• Reduce link status check interval to 2s (previously set to 15s) and monitor for DNS failures in the logging service.

• Expose additional metrics as SNMP queries and traps

  • Expose corr. vector - which, together with vibration, can provide an indication of scintillation

  • Expose humidity

  • Expose window heater power and config

  • Expose vibration

• To see a complete list of all features, metrics and traps supported by CENTAURI, visit "CENTAURI | Release 5.0 SNMP Updates, New Traps & Alarms.

Positioning, Alignment & Tracking (PAT)

• Improve the control performance in PAT and reduce the energy waste generated by the gimbal

• Improve beacon detection in Automatic Exposure Control (AEC)

• Add a laser burnout prevention system

• Improve remote side tracking in some edge cases

• Fix a race condition/deadlock in AEC

• Improve APC resiliency specifically when sending commands to the laser source 

• Add measures to extend the lifetime of the beacon laser

Software Updates

• Improve the resiliency of the device during software updates

• Add the ability to update the base SNMP config during software updates

Logging

• Reduce resource usage when doing log rotation

• Enable tracking minor hardware revisions

• Don’t report invalid laser source output values

Core OS

• Update SSL certificates

Release 4.2.6 [Patch]

Release Date: 01 June 2023

Fixes

• Improved protection measures for very high RX power that may damage the CENTAURI receiver, handling an infrequent situation where the receiver will temporarily look away from the transmitter to reduce exposure. 
• Fix for network settings where a static IP address is used with no DHCP server. 
• Fix for network settings where the client network has an internal IP address which is the same as the CENTAURI VPN server.

Release 4.2.5 [Patch]

Release Date: 26 May 2023

Fixes

• Fix issue where bad vision sensor exposure readings cause low/no correction vector data to be sent

Release 4.2.4 [Patch]

Release Date: 05 May 2023

Fixes

• Resolved an error that caused devices to lose tracking and not recover due to vision sensor control system settings

Release 4.2.3 [Patch][Critical]

Release Date: 05 Apr 2023

Fixes

• Critical update for device security certificates that are due to expire
• Removed the Transcelestial DNS server IP address from the default round-robin list of DNS servers in network settings

Release 4.2.2 [Patch]

Release Date: 06 March 2023

New

• Use motor torque control to improve alignment & tracking performance

Improvements

• SNMP enhancements
  • Add monitoring for additional processes
  • Add trap for “link up” (in addition to “link down”)
  • Add trap for “monitoring service down”
  • Improve SNMP Tx query resiliency (reduce time out errors)
  • Increase link up/down polling frequency

• Add MCU flash retry for increased software update resiliency

Fixes

• Set lower MTU size on network interfaces to avoid networking issues due to low MTU size on most customer routers
• Fix SNMP config update during software updates
• Correct paths in SNMP scripts

Release 4.2 

Release Date: 07 February 2023

NOTE: The "Calibration" function under "Settings" will be removed from the DMD App in the next release (4.3.0). We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We anticipate we will relaunch the calibration feature in early Q3 2023, with significant improvements. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

New 

• Run diagnostics checks during alignment in case a link cannot be established 
• Added logging for resource utilisation for specific services
• Exposed additional metrics for reporting purposes

Improvements

• “Fine Tuning” is now “Calibration” in the DMD App
• Updates to run services on a forthcoming OS upgrade
• Improve connectivity checks when DNS fails
• Enhanced security with support for Vault-signed certificates for SSH device access

Fixes 

• Fixed missing dependencies for power loss detection binary
• Fix performance issues in Automatic Power Control
• Fixed calibration issues when running in “debug mode”
• Fixed version parsing in API 
• Fixed UI directory permissions when running sw updates
• Fix log timestamps

Release 4.1.7 [Patch]

Release Date: 04 November 2022

Improvements

• Reduce timeouts for several components during software update processes

Release 4.1.6 [Patch]

Release Date: 29 October 2022

Fixes

• Avoid a condition where multiple software update processes can be attempted simultaneously.

Release 4.1.5 [Patch]

Release Date: 25 October 2022

Improvements

• Software update process improvements

Release 4.1.4 [Patch]

Release Date: 14 October 2022

Improvements

• Modify Automatic Power Control to reduce the likelihood of component failure during vibration events.
• Support for upcoming mainboard revisions 

Release 4.1.3 [Patch]

Release Date: 29 September 2022

Improvements

• Software update process improvements

Fixes

• Address component initialisation errors when running diagnostics
• Record the raw values of focus check scores when focus check tests result is “fail”
• Fix calculation errors when running calibration on ARM architecture CPUs
• Changed hardware drivers to reduce software failures

Release 4.1.2 [Patch]

Release Date: 23 September 2022

Fixes

• Focus/Vision API bug fixes

• CI/CD process improvements (internal)

Release 4.1.0

Release Date: 12 August 2022

New

• Calibration (Fine-Tuning) can be run from within the CENTAURI DMD app

• Preparation for the rollout of new link availability reporting features

Improvements

• Many improvements to DMD App user interface

• Add SNMP-specific formats for link metrics

• A passcode is no longer required to turn CENTAURI lasers off

• Improve factory reset functionality

Fixes

• Correct vision sensor scaling when browser windows resize

• Update/upgrade supporting software to the latest versions

• Various housekeeping and maintenance tasks
  
  

Release 4.0.7 [Patch]

Release Date: 12 August 2022

Fixes

• Changes to SNMP configuration options

Release 4.0.6 [Patch]

Release Date: 13 July 2022

Fixes

• Factory reset reliability improvements

Release 4.0.5 [Patch]

Release Date: 1 June 2022

Fixes

• Update additional device component certificates

Release 4.0.4 [Patch]

Release Date: 30 May 2022

Fixes

• Factory reset works as expected
• Alignment vision sensor stream scaling fixes

Release 4.0.3 [Patch]

Release Date: 28 May 2022

Fixes

• Factory reset fixes

Release 4.0.2 [Patch]

Release Date: 17 May 2022

Fixes

• Update certificates for logging components

Release 4.0.1 [Patch]

Release Date: 13 May 2022

Fixes

• Fix Rx power readings which may show as "Inf".

Release 4.0

Release Date: 9 May 2022

Features

• All New Device Management and Deployment (DMD) App
  • Updated user interface for CENTAURI
  • The app runs on CENTAURI; no need for separate mobile app
  • New device and component status dashboard
  • New device settings and network configuration interface
  • Completely redesigned deployment and alignment experience
• New device observability and diagnostics APIs for key components
• Traps support for SNMP

Improvements

• Improved reliability of link up/down reporting
• Reduced vision sensor latency during alignment
• APIs updated to use HTTP/2 with HTTPS
• Device factory reset updated and improved
• Component event codes and error messaging improvements

Fixes

• Multiple fixes to CENTAURI error handling, service and process management
• Lots of refactoring and housekeeping

Release 3.9

Release Date: 4 March 2022

Features

• Added computer vision checks to diagnostics API

Improvements

• Faster reacquisition of beacon after link drops
• Refinements to APC response cycles
• Error message clarity and readability improvements

Fixes

• Reduce device startup time via fixes to alignment process and code
• Diagnostics logging fixes
• Fixed error checks and handling in API

Release 3.8

Release Date: 28 January 2022

Features

• SNMP proxy available for use when monitoring multiple devices
• SNMP now uses device serial number as sysName
• SNMP sysLocation (set to NA) and sysContact (set to [email protected])
• SNMP traps in user testing
  
  

Improvements

• Reduce link loss recovery times through power control optimization
• Multiple improvements to Alignment and Tracking stability
• Fixed several issues causing failure to acquire links when deploying using the Android app
• Improved error messaging and handling
• Improve APIs for diagnostics, fine alignment control, analytics
• Enhance factory reset functions
• Various security enhancements
  
  

Fixes

• Fixed computer vision misconfiguration in deployment apps
• Make it easier to apply software updates
• Maintain service states (enabled/disabled) after applying software updates

Release 3.7

Release Date: 15 October 2021

This release focused mainly on internal improvements and preparing internal systems for the development of future releases.

Release 3.6

Release Date: 6 August 2021

Features

• New focus check tool for computer vision system
  
  

Improvements

• Tracking stability improvements

• “Test” mode improvements

• TCT Admins can push software to many devices concurrently
  
  

Fixes

• Tech debt relief (code refactor)

• Update/patch 3rd party components to latest stable releases