As noted in the title, I am trying to figure out the safest way to update the firmware on my recently purchased Keychron K1 QMK V6 keyboard. I was finally able to get the web based Keychron Launcher app to talk to my KB after using chmod to give the correct HIDRAW device read-write access but it looks like the new firmware needs another utility to be installed and only the Windoze directions are provided.
From my own online research it looks like there is a terminal-based method but it wasn’t really explained. I am not super concerned about updating the firmware since the preloaded version works well enough for my needs but I am still wondering if anyone knew of a tutorial on how to do this without bricking my shiny new keyboard.
I am using Fedora 43 Workstation if that makes any difference. Thanks in advance for any tips or advice!
When they do this, they know they have a problem with their flash utils and process 🤣
I’d leave it alone.
Or maybe its because flashing firmware is inherently risky. Any power loss mid flash would brick the device.
Unless you live in a place with inherently unreliable power, or are flashing in the middle of a thunderstorm/tornado/hurricane/typhoon/earthquake/etc, Flashing is relatively safe as long as you follow directions.
And those risk could be completely eliminated with a dual bios setup, where even if there WAS a failure, it could fall back on the other bios and still work flawlessly. or even better, let you flash the currently inactive one, and switches that to primary upon successful flash. I think even flashback lets you recover from a corrupted bios, too?
So yes, it circles around back to them being cheap and having problems with their process, because they are cheap.
Yeah I see that all the time for firmware updates. They don’t want to have to replace your product if you’re an idiot and unplug it or something.
If the brain is functioning as expected, a brain transplant is ill-advised as risk to reward doesnt make sense… But computers
Nah, it’s not that risky if your tooling and process is solid. I have thousands of edge devices out in the field doing firmware updates on carrier boards from a specific manufacturer and have never had one fail or brick in update. Why? Because their tooling is absolutely fantastic and pretty bulletproof.
Even a simple {checksum>transfer>checksum>write>checksum} is pretty safe, UNLESS…you know the carrier you’re flashing doesnt have the ability to do so, in which case, you definitely put a warning like this on your product because you know it has a penchant for failure.
And I assume all of those devices have a UPS
the failure im referring to is power/other interruptions during the write process. doing a pre and post checksum is worthless if the flash fails half way through.
if its a device that you expect to flash regularly, theres usually a recovery process or failover device, right? no way youre flashing prod devices without a dr or failure recovery.
for a random users keyboard? simple - dont flash it if its not broken.