David Smart / SWUpdate Featured

Software Update via Ethernet - the mbed application can pull down an updated application binary from a web server and activate that binary. This library works only with the LPC1768, as it relies on the magic-chip boot-loader mechanism.

Dependents:   WattEye X10Svr PUB_SWUpdate

Success!! With this library, a network connection, and a web server hosting a new binary image, you can update the mbed firmware over the air (FOTA) - well, at least via Ethernet so far.

As of March 2015, it has been tested with the following mbed official libraries:

And a custom derivation:

  • HTTPClient v33, v32, which includes a custom HTTPFile.

Part of the update process involves checking the integrity of the downloaded binary file, for both a checksum and the program (file) size. To create this additional information, a small perl script is used (the important part is only 20 lines of code). See the documentation in the header file.

After the new binary is successfully downloaded, the checksum and the size are evaluated and if correct, then the old binary file is removed (this is the only way to cause the new binary to activate).

The mbed can then be automatically reset to activate the new image, or this may be deferred in case there is some other process necessary for an orderly restart.

Details are in the SWUpdate header file, and PUB_SWUpdate is a publicly accessible demonstration program for this library.

Diff: SWUpdate.h

Revision:
18:5f7667d63a27
Parent:
17:1d318666246c
Child:
19:169aab9047bd
--- a/SWUpdate.h	Sat Jul 05 22:27:09 2014 +0000
+++ b/SWUpdate.h	Sat Oct 11 17:27:46 2014 +0000
@@ -167,9 +167,9 @@
 ///     ...
 /// @endcode
 ///
-/// @param url is a pointer to a text string of the url from which to download.
-/// @param name is the base filename of the binary file.
-/// @param action determines whether to automatically reboot to activate the new bin.
+/// @param[in] url is a pointer to a text string of the url from which to download.
+/// @param[in] name is the base filename of the binary file.
+/// @param[in] action determines whether to automatically reboot to activate the new bin.
 /// @return SWUpdate_T code indicating if the update succeeded, otherwise it returns a bitmask
 ///         of failure flags. Also, note that if it succeeded, and it was set for AUTO_REBOOT
 ///         that it will not return from this function.