Trace Systems, Inc

You've given your product a USB Interface, so why not also use it to make upgrading as simple as possible, too? This reduces risk, saves support and shipping costs too!

What If Your Worst Fears Come True?

It happens more often than you might think. The hurry to meet a product ship date causes a rush to finish the project, and confusion at the critical time when final test and integration are taking place. You ship lots of units, only to discover later that some firmware bug got into the products you shipped.

What will you do? How will you pay for all the support costs??

The old way was to do one of these things:

• Have the customer ship the product back to you. You open the product and program new firmware into the PIC processor inside, test it a it, and pack it up and ship it back to the customer. (Sounds expensive, doesn't it? It IS...)
• Provide the customer with some slipshod, hobby-grade bootloader that she has to use with either Windows Hyperterminal (her laptop doesn't have a serial port anymore, remember?), or some PC program written for techies, that confuses her and gives your product a bad reputation.
• Or worse yet, ignore the customer and hope that nobody else hears about the problem.

But now there's a better way: USB bootloader Pro!

USB bootloader Pro from Trace Systems Inc. lets you you email your upgrade to your customers. The End User Upgrade Mode presents your end users with a highly simplified and largely automated user interface: a few clicks of the mouse and their product has been upgraded, free of hassles and confusion for even non-technical users.

We recommend that you send your end users a self extracting WinZip[tm] file that contains the USB bootloader files that you have set up for them. (WinZip products not included in USB bootloader Pro.)

All your customer has to do is to extract the files to a clean new folder on his Windows PC, run the BLPro.exe file, and click the mouse a few times.

Talk about "phoning it in!" It's quick, easy, and safe for both you and your customers!

Here's what one USB bootloader Pro user has to say:

Our customers find us from all over the world. Many of our designs involve custom firmware and production runs of only 1-5 pieces. In the past, when a user would request additional features after taking delivery, our only option was to ship the gear back to the shop for reprogramming.

Since most of our customers work in 'need it today' environments, we've spent a collective fortune shipping equipment back and forth overnight. Just this week, we've pushed additional features out to one customer in Australia and a second group on the far side of the country.

Our customers love this new solution, and sales have increased specifically because we now offer field updates as an option. The money we've saved on overnight freight has more than paid Trace Systems' fee.

The Trace Systems USB bootloader allows us to provide firmware updates in the field. It's a simple, elegant and stable solution. I can't imagine developing any future product without it.