Hello,

My company has recently purchased a FloBLE plus device (as well as a FloJack BZR) – order #62501.

We’re interested in the FloBLE Plus for an upcoming Kiosk project that will involve unattended iPads connected to RFID encoders.

We previously ran into a few issues using a generic ACR1255U-J1 device. Although it worked in most circumstances there were occasionally times where we’d have to toggle the power on the ACR to get it to reconnect to our app.

However, this device was running firmware version 1.16.03. The new FloBLE Plus we received is running 3.00.05. So far the FloBle Plus has been running without any issues (no disconnects etc). So we’re wondering if all new purchases of FloBLE Plus devices will use firmware version 3.00.05. We’re also wondering if it’s possibly to upgrade existing devices to 3.00.05 – the firmware flash tool at https://flomio.com/acr1255u-j1-flashtool/ only offers 1.16.03

Here are some more details about the 1.16.03 device:

There were two problems in particular:

1) Battery LED on device would appear as green/yellow even when the device is unplugged (and in Bluetooth mode). In this state, the initial bluetooth connection via the ACS SDK would succeed but immediately after sending an APDU we’d receive a centralManager:didDisconnectPeripheral:error: message. The only solution was toggling the power on the device (after which the green/yellow status of the battery LED would clear – and only the blue communication LED would display). The odd thing is that the ACS docs claim that the battery LED will only flash red when in bluetooth mode. Green should only appear when USB mode is toggled (leading us to believe this is a firmware/hardware issue). I don’t have reliable steps to reproduce this “green battery LED despite bluetooth mode toggled” issue unfortunately.

2) When the device is plugged in and powered (but in Bluetooth mode) we could eventually get the device to disconnect and to refuse subsequent connection attempts (The battery LED would be a solid red while the Comm LED would be unpowered). In this circumstance restarting our app and even toggling the power switch on the ACS wouldn’t fix things. The only way to solve was unplugging the power cord, then toggling the on/off switch on the ACS then plugging the device back in to power.

So, although we’re still testing, it seems that a FloBLE Plus running 3.00.05 can be a reliable solution for our project (our only other option is to switch to an audio jack device). We’d just like to be able to ensure that any readers we put into production are running 3.00.05 as 1.16.03 appears to be problematic.

Thanks!
Ehren