Yeah, I tried opening both with a text editor and there's nothing much readable in there. Some hex data could easily store all the settings for their hardware.
The import/export feels like an installer level thing, where they get the desired settings figured out and just load them onto every install. Or for me to back up my settings and load from a known good set of settings.
Before I retired, I engineered a rural county stationary wireless Internet subscription service. I learned a lot of the pitfalls of trying to maintain firmware updates across widely dispersed client "radios" ... basically routers. Of course we used commercially available hardware, and that came with the firmware provided by those manufacturers, and they provided updates ... Very much like the business model of these alternate power devices..
One of the lessons I'm sure we all know is the Internet is a dangerous place. But my gosh, the continual evolution and sophistication of even specialized and targeted malicious exploits is ongoing. So for example, you read the release notes for Conext Gateway/ Insight v1.17 Build 079 [23 Feb 2023]
Summary of fixes provided:
- Corrected Q(P) Gateway User Interface
- Fixed HVMPPT custom battery setting missing issue
- Prevent AC2 from setting to GRID
- Fixed connectivity status issue when using static IP
- Fixed AGS SoC trigger issue
- Fixed a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in Gateway
We saw several variations of that a few years ago in our wireless business. Hackers had managed to rig the websites of useful wireless reference info pages. If you opened a targeted router's GUI and logged in with valid credentials, while simultaneously opening another window to that hacked reference page during the same browser session, the hack would then download and install a hacked version of firmware into that router. The router would seem to keep working normally, but all the while it was "phoning home" to the hackers, where they could have full control of it.
Yes, were are here talking about the Conext Gateway, so maybe we just update the firmware on that since the XW-Pro doesn't have direct Internet access? Problem with that is you know at some point the "latest" Gateway firmware will only go "back so far" in their firmware level compatibility.
My more immediate case is that I isolated a bug in the Conext Gateway's WiFi. We are trying to report it to Schneider, but I am sure that at the first level of support, they will not help until we update all the boxes to the latest firmware. Since there is custom Modbus code access, I want to know how hard it will be to move between firmware levels.
And so that's why I really hate that they don't have a way to back up each XW-Pro (master/slave) to their own files.
