custom library - fota for non networked devices

[lnsri22]

Hello everyone!!

Is there any idea on developing a custom library to support fota -Firmware Over The Air for non networked devices such as PyBoard or any such bare metals?

It would be of a great help if anybody could share some insights or some way as it seems that I have been pitching in the dark to start off with


Thanks in advance!!

[kevinkk525]

If your device is not networked, how is this going to work and how is this different than connecting a pc to it and flashing a new firmware?

[lnsri22]

The term non-networked which I referred was the factory state of the device. Like ESP8266 which is Wi-Fi enabled(networked) by default, PyBoard is not.

I am planning to use an external cellular engine. Coming across various forums, I find that the typical way of doing this is to maintain two banks in the flash memory (one - for running application and another to store the firmware that is being downloaded).

I am trying to figure this out on PyBoard(way to access built in flash memory. I'm not sure whether I might need use an external flash since the built-in flash has limited capacity).

If this could be done without the means of disturbing the running application, it would be great with respect to PyBoard.

This is needed in scenarios of remotely updating the firmware that is running on the device

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks in advance

[kevinkk525]

For remotely updating firmware your device has to be networked in some kind (WLAN, i2c, ...).
I don't know if anything is done in that direction. Apparently not even OTA works for esp8266 yet.

[lnsri22]

Thanks for the quick reply there!!

As of now , the only way of networking is to use the GSM module(project specific).

I not sure whether I could use any other module to get this done

[kevinkk525]

Well you definitely need a way of uploading/downloading the new firmware (WLAN, I2C, some bus, GSM, ...) and an OTA module. ESP32 (at least loboris port) has an OTA module that can be used with WLAN and ethernet. I don't know about the pyboard and esp8266 does not seem to have support for that yet.

[Roberthh]

There is an OTA variant for ESP8266. Just look into the download section.

[kevinkk525]

Thanks. Looks like there's some work done although it is not as easy as the OTA solution provided in loboris port for esp32.