The Bobcat Miner February Fallout

This month has been extremely efficient for roughly 3/4 of the bobcat fleet, until a week or so ago.

In attempt to address issues with the current February OTA by Bobcatminer. v1.02.79

One of the more common diagnoser “errors” seen, generally this means it is processing. If you see this leave your bobcat alone and let it process the blockchain.

02/02/2022 was the date of launch for this OTA, this firmware has treated most of the Bobcat Miner 300 fleet surprisingly well, until approximately 1 week ago plenty of reports in both helium community discord and bobcat's rushed in with varying bobcat specific issues.

These problems you are experiencing are possibly tied directly to a firmware bug (personal speculation as a moderator).

The problems community members have reported with vary from:

Beacon Ability Loss (Either not Beaconing or having no Witnesses from your Beacon)

Witness Ability Loss (Not able to witness other hotspot's beacon at all and it is only Beaconing, with also possibly no witnesses)

Constant Sync (Sync gap increasing, Sync height went to 1, Sync Gap stuck, Syncs but then falls out of sync once it fully syncs.)

Diagnoser Command Failure (Commands from your Bobcat Miner Diagnoser Page will not work, either they fail to initialize, or they fail completely with no troubleshooting ability, this includes failure in these commands Miner (5s) Command, Reboot, Resync, and Fast Sync.)

Diagnoser Not Loading (Try loading in a different browser, or on a different device for a potential quick fix, remember to close out of old diagnoser tabs to ensure your hotspot does not slow down.) Please remember these are not official terms and I don't represent Bobcat, rather I am just trying to shed some light upon the community as a community member just like you.

Helium recently made a snapshot on the blockchain to help RAK units, this was not a firmware update but it did push some Bobcat’s out of sync unfortunately. This happened to one of my unit’s after the Snapshot.

What can be done about these Potential Firmware Problems/Bug?

If you are overwhelmed by correcting the issue yourself, then please contact Bobcat Support here:

https://bobcatminer.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

2. Reach out to fellow community members (Publicly preferred) who might be experiencing the same pattern of issues you are, they may have corrected it and if willing will share what process they went through. No sole person in this discord server will give you the "correct" advice per say, and troubleshooting these units at this point has been different for everyone.

3. Diagnose the issue yourself and react accordingly to your best ability, sometimes the best way to troubleshoot is simple trial and error. Information on using the bobcat diagnoser can be found here: www.bobcatminer.com/post/bobcat-diagnoser-user-guide

This is the newly revised Bobcat Miner Support Request Page that I have linked, which now has some more specific selections to make including an option to upload an attachment to show support what problems you are dealing with on a visual level.

Please also keep in mind the helium network is not perfect (neither am I), and is constantly going through changes. Some of the problems you are seeing could possibly be tied to a helium network p2p communication issue (libp2p errors), not much can be done on that front unfortunately. We draw ever closer to Light Hotspots and not having to Sync or Port Forward ever again (thank goodness for HIP 55 though).
In the end we really can never specifically blame either or, as they do have to work in tandem to be completely efficient (hotspot makers i.e. bobcat and helium network), if you are reaching out to Bobcat Support please remain patient for a response. 
Try to be mindful about your initial support request message including information such as when the issue occurred, how long it has persisted, Bobcat's IP, MAC Address, any changes you have made hardware wise (moved hotspot deployment, changed antenna), and thorough details pertaining to the problems you are seeing your bobcat's diagnoser. Don't just say "Why is my miner not working" and be nice to support please.
If you are reaching out to a fellow community member please be respectful to one another and do not expect answers immediately, or answers that will correct your bobcat's issues specifically.

TL;DR As of now I am (remember just a community moderator) under the impression Bobcat is working on an OTA for these specific problems at hand, no announcements have been made but when they are they will be posted in server accordingly. This OTA has treated thousands of Bobcat Miner’s very well, unfortunately the network needs time to mature still. Dramatic changes are coming to increase hotspot efficiency and we all hope for a brighter hotspot future. Thank you for reading.