"Transferring" a customer Device from a Template to another

Need Help With My Project
1

Continuing the discussion from Change template without deleting the device:

Hi,
I have a question and it has to do with this topic.
Let’s say I will have 2 types of customers for the same HW device:

  • Premium customers that pay a subscription and therefore, they have access to a richer Template with more information and data
  • Regular customers with limited access to device information and data.
    As an example, one of the Premium customers can become a Regular customer as he/she stops paying the subscription.

What is the best process to do so?

Thanks
Ignacio

2

Hello,

Perhaps this documentation will be useful to you https://docs.blynk.io/en/blynk.console/devices/actions-with-devices#device-transfer

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@Oleksii-QA i think you’ve misunderstood @AstroHeat’s requirement.

My understanding is this…

A remote customer has a hardware device flashed with a sketch which uses template A - the fully-featured product with all the bells and whistles.
If that customer then stops paying his premium subscription to @AstroHeat the device firmware needs to be swapped over to a different template - Template B - which gives the minimum amount of functionality, and the customer needs to then see a cut-down mobile and web dashboard.

This firmware update and change of template needs to be done remotely, via Blynk.Air
However, Blynk.Air performs a check and will prevent new firmware being uploaded if the template ID of the new shipment doesn’t match the template ID of the existing firmware.

In a similar scenario, a customer may have the basic functionality (Template B) , and wishes to upgrade to the enhanced functionality (Template A). Once again, a change of template ID is required in the Blynk.Air update.

Another scenario which has come-up is the need to ship a re-designed Beta test firmware to a device, but to allow all other devices using the same template to remain on the old firmware release until testing is complete. As the new firmware will have re-designed dashboards, a new template is needed to achieve this Beta testing setup. However, this updated firmware can’t be shipped via Blynk.Air because the shipment checks to ensure that the existing and new template IDs are the same.

I guess the simple (from our perspective) solution is to allow this template ID check to be overridden by the administrator when performing the Blynk.Air update (maybe a Plus/Pro feature only)?

Pete.

1 Like
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@PeteKnight and @Oleksii-QA, thank you for your answers.
From Pete’s response I deduct, this mechanism is not yet implemented in Blynk.
I am surprised, nobody has requested this functionality before, as I believe is a pretty classic business model.

@Oleksii-QA, is there any work around solution for this mechanism?
The only one I can think of now is to delete the end-user from the Organization, forcing the end-user to factory reset the device, by using a new invitation to upload the firmware associated to her subscription. Would that make sense? Any other option?

Thanks again
Best regards
Ignacio

5

Sorry, forget about my potential work around solution. I does not work. Factory resetting only deletes Auth Token and WiFi credentials, but not the firmware.
Thanks anyway for reading.

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It has been requested before. But it was told that there were quite a few wrong updates done with wrong template id n token resulting in rendering the device useless.

When we think about it ! Yes its a serious issue.

But its good to have features.

There could be a secondary check like we have when we need to delete the device - it asked us to enter “DELETE” to really delete the device. So this makes sure that the user is deliberately deleting the device.

Likewise the web console can show a pop up saying
“ There is a mismatch of the template id, are you sure you want to continue? Type “UPDATE” to continue.

Even after this there are chances of updating a wrong firmware, but then Blynk is not responsible.