Hello,
I noticed from this document: Notecard Outboard Firmware Update - Blues Developers that “The Notecard LoRa does not support OTA host or Notecard firmware updates.”
Would you be kind enough to guide me what the alternative is for Notecard LoRa users? How can we update the MCU firmware remotely, if not through Notehub/Notecard? Do you plan to introduce the OTA firmware update feature for LoRa anytime soon?
Thanks,
Ehsan
Hey @e669danesh,
We don’t allow host firmware updates over LoRa because of the low-bandwidth nature of the LoRa and LoRaWAN protocols.
All firmware updates to LoRa-based devices must happen with a physical connection. The easiest way to update the firmware of the Notecard for LoRa itself is using a USB connection and our In-Browser Terminal.
If you have any other questions let me know.
Thanks,
TJ.
I understand that but my emphasis was on “remote” updates. Once devices are deployed in the field, it is not possible (practical) to do firmware updates of either the Notecard or MCU with USB. So, I wanted to know whether your team or forum members have experience with OTA firmware updates of LoRa devices.
@tjvantoll It appears that The Things Stack is implementing FUOTA on their ecosystem: FUOTA | The Things Stack for LoRaWAN
So it seems logical Blues plan to introduce this feature in their LoRa system. Already it will be challenging to use them in real-life applications where you deploy devices in the field where you won’t have physical access to them for several years.
Hey @e669danesh,
We’ve aware of the FUOTA standard, however it’s been around for several years now and we’ve yet to see anyone actually use it outside of a demo context.
It is based on broadcast - trying to update all devices that are within range of a gateway at once - with individual nodes trying to later fetch the packets that they missed. But it is incredibly unreliable and chatty, and you need to schedule your device to be online and ‘listening’ when the broadcasts happen. Plus, our current Notecard for LoRa doesn’t have the flash capacity necessary to store the necessary packets, so we’d need to increase that as well.
All in all, we’d love to be able to provide OTA updates for LoRa, but the difficulties of making it work (because of the nature of the protocol itself), make it not worth the engineering effort and cost currently.
Sorry, I wish I had a better answer because I know having to update physical devices manually is a huge hassle.
TJ
Thanks, TJ, for the clarification. I understand the situation better now.
An alternative approach could be leveraging the MCU’s Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) capability to perform over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates for the host. This would require enabling BLE via the Notehub environment variables and being within proximity to the devices, but it seems to be a more practical solution compared to using a USB connection.