No no, nobody flashes the device but the consumer. You get the device into their hands and let them flash it. Just put a notice in each shipment saying "you need to flash this before use, and give them detailed instructions". Or even have it built into the default firmware it ships with an alert or message saying "the firmware on this device is out of date, complete performance and stability is not guaranteed, please upgrade the firmware as soon as possible". Or unless they did it like Apple where you just plug it into any Windows PC or OSX to upgrade it. You could make a program for Linux too though most people can do it themselves (given the directions). I rather have that than what they're doing now.