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October 24, 2018 In News, Obstruction Lighting

Vanguard® Medium FTS 370 Firmware 3.6

Flash Technology is issuing this technical bulletin to notify customers, sales, technical support and service teams that a firmware release will start shipping with all Vanguard Medium FTS 370x tower lighting orders starting October 24, 2018.

The new obstruction lighting system firmware includes the following features:

  • Easy access to the PLC COMM quality metrics with the elimination of the password requirement for the Factory Diagnostics Menu.
  • The unit now remembers mode override across reboots with a 15-minute granularity. This does not include manual switch overrides.
  • A “Flash Specification” menu item with the following tower configurations on the OLED Display has been added:
    • FAA (default)
    • ICAO
    • 4K White Night
    • CAR621
  • OLED display status screen shows “FTS 370d STDY” if the connected beacon is steady red capable (ICAO Medium Intensity Type C).
  • Updated beacon firmware version mapping to display in the format V3.X.Y where X & Y are the specific firmware version numbers.
  • Added “FLSH SPEC ALM” to OLED display to indicate if there is a beacon with firmware version pre-V3.4 and flash specification set to values other than FAA. This is to catch non-supported beacons with non-FAA specification configurations. For ease of reporting, flash specification alarm is reported as a regular configuration alarm to all the monitoring interfaces except display.
  • Real-time clock support (for Rev E or later Controller PCB) has been added.
    • Current system time can be viewed or set from the menu System Settings > Real Time Clock.
    • Daylight Savings Time option is added with options Enabled/Disabled. If set to enabled, then daylight savings time will be automatically adjusted as per the schedule. If a new time is set then it is assumed that the time has been set according to the adjusted daylight savings clock.
    • OLED display event log shows RTC time along with the event age.

 

Quality Improvements & Risk Mitigation:

  • Compatible with new MultiTech modem firmware V4.0.5.
  • Backward compatibility to older modem firmware versions.

 

3rd Party Monitoring Improvements:

  • New Modbus map registers to support Flash Specification, Beacon Red Mode Status and PLC Communication quality for beacon and marker and real-time clock registers. Modbus map version 11 provides details.
  • SNMP additions include:
    • PLC communication quality metrics to beacon and marker devices tables.
    • Beacon Red Mode status to beacon device table.
    • Flash specification, real-time clock configurations to tower lighting configurations.

 

Web Page Interface Enhancements:

  • Diagnostics webpage shows PLC COMM quality metrics for the beacon and marker (short-term look based on last 512 messages).
  • The progress indicator shows completion status with the message “System X Firmware YY% Complete”.
  • Added a Flash Specification option to tower lighting configuration page.
  • Beacon Red Mode Status is shown if steady red capable beacon is detected and communication established.
  • The system settings webpage now includes a Real-Time-Clock display and configuration options for the clock.
  • The current system date time will be displayed on the main webpage and the event log page. It will be updated on every webpage refresh.
  • The copyright has been updated to 2018.

 

The change is implemented with immediate effect.