Question about restoring official LEGO firmware

[marc-hg]

When I try to restore the official LEGO firmware once it ends it doesn't work out of the box in the official spike legacy webapp or desktop app (I have to upgrade to 3.0, then downgrade to 2.0 then for some reason upgrade again in the lego legacy app)

Is there any way to go from pybricks firmware to the official spike legacy firmware from pybricks? The one used at https://spikelegacy.legoeducation.com/

[laurensvalk]

Thanks for reporting.

it doesn't work out of the box in the official spike legacy webapp

This is supposed to work, although it is supposed to give you an update to the latest V2 if available.

Is this not happening?

[laurensvalk]

I don't think so --- I think the official downgrader works essentially the same as ours. It downgrades the firmware, but leaves it up to the app to restore the "runtime" files like sounds and the on-screen menu, which get wiped when installing V3.

I'm still not quite sure why after that V2 -> Pybricks -> V2 works without the auto-update

Because we saw this coming, Pybricks does not touch the file system at all 😄 So when you come from V2 and go back to V2 later, all your files are still there.

[laurensvalk]

Out of curiosity, what is the use case of using V2 and V3 together?

Or conversely, what could we do to make Pybricks more useful by itself, so that switching back was not needed? :)

[marc-hg]

On some occasions I require usb connectivity and V2 works with that so I use both pybricks and V2.

I actually don't use V3 for anything but it's not as convenient to downgrade to V2 as it is to change it to pybricks since it becomes a two step process.

Thanks a lot for the explanation though.

[laurensvalk]

So just to reiterate, V2 -> Pybricks -> V2 is expected to work without additional updates.

I'll have to try this myself to see what the issue might be.

[marc-hg]

Yeah, V2(working V2) -> Pybricks -> V2 works without additional updates from what I've tested. The issue only comes up when you upgrade to V3 (I assume because of the filesystem)

[smolto]

@dlech, if difference is the file system on the external flash, Do you think it would be feasible to implement what LEGO does in their app? Because at the end of 2023 I understand that this process will be deprecated and downgrading will be more complex.

[dlech]

What is being deprecated and where did you hear it?

Since LEGO has fairly frequent updates, we didn't think it makes sense to try to keep up with that. It seems easier to just use the LEGO apps for that part to ensure it is always what is needed by the version of the LEGO app that is installed by the user.

[smolto]

I'm sorry if I explained myself wrong, I don't know what they are going to depreciate or when, I was just assuming that scenario to ask you the question of the feasibility of developing that feature. Perfect, from what you have been able to tell me, it is best to use LEGO applications for these processes because they will always install what is necessary to work.

[Kikketer]

I'm having a similar issue with the general idea that "implement what LEGO does in their app". Right now I have a Mindstorms (blue controller) and I'd like to convert it to a Spike Prime V3.

So I "restore" in pybricks claiming that it's the Spike controller (yellow) which works fine to convert the mindstorms controller to spike. But it's updated with V2 of spike, so when I go to the LEGO app I need to upgrade to V3. But the lego app throws an error when I attempt that. I assume there's something different or detected that it's mindstorms vs spike.

Path: Mindstorms -> PyBricks restore to Spike (yellow) -> LEGO App Upgrade -> error thrown.

[laurensvalk]

Since V3, the LEGO Education app does not support/allow using the MINDSTORMS hub. This is not a technical limitation, so there might be other reasons. (It would have been nice if their error just said that, though.)

Likewise, we don't know if we'd have permission to offer that path, so we don't.

That said, we have a really exciting update in the pipeline which might mean you wouldn't even need that path anymore. (Hint: Think Pybricks, but you don't have to write any code... 😉)

[Kikketer]

Awesome thank you @laurensvalk I figured if anyone knew the answer it would be the folks behind PyBricks.
I'll wait impatiently for this sweet update in the pipe!

I'll hang out in PyBricks land with my older controller. Thanks for keeping this thing relevant.