{"id":204,"date":"2017-05-22T17:25:59","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T00:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/?p=204"},"modified":"2017-05-23T01:58:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T08:58:15","slug":"arduino-star-otto-light-updating-the-onboard-esp8266s-firmware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/204\/arduino-star-otto-light-updating-the-onboard-esp8266s-firmware","title":{"rendered":"Arduino Star OTTO (Light): Updating the onboard ESP8266’s firmware"},"content":{"rendered":"

“An ESP8266? That’s easy!\u00a0Feel free to follow along with my simple step by step instructions. I make codeloading FUN!!”
\n<\/em>(with apologies to Strong Bad)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Beware: There be dragons here!<\/strong> While this information should enable you to recover even if you screw up the ESP8266 firmware, I can’t guarantee that will always work (though I am far more confident now that I have serial recovery working…)<\/p>\n

The Arduino Star OTTO<\/a>\u00a0has an Espressif ESP8266<\/a> on board. As I’ve found\u00a0two\u00a0important<\/a>\u00a0bugs<\/a>\u00a0so far, I decided the first order of business is to learn how to modify it!<\/p>\n

Here’s a\u00a0close-up showing the OTTO’s master reset button, the ESP8266 module, the ESP8266’s bootloader button (“ESP B\/L”) and the OTTO’s bootloader button (at the very bottom).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In my previous post<\/a> I noted that the terminal serial device for the OTTO is SerialUSB<\/em>, not the usual Serial<\/em>. In fact, it appears the\u00a0Serial<\/em>\u00a0device is what talks directly to the ESP8266. More on that below…<\/p>\n

\n

First, install the Arduino 1.8.2 (or later) IDE (I don’t think it really matters if it’s the .org or .cc one – they both seem to work here).<\/p>\n

Windows users:<\/strong>\u00a0Git for Windows<\/a> is handy. I’ve had some problems with 2.13.0 though, so you might have better luck with 2.11.1<\/a>. As for Python<\/a>, it claims to need 2.7 but I used 3.6 and it worked fine.<\/p>\n

Next, install the very latest ESP8266 hardware library for Arduino, per the instructions for doing it via Git<\/a>. (I tried installing the Boards Manager version of the library and that was too out of date for this.) In a nutshell:<\/p>\n

cd hardware\r\nmkdir esp8266com\r\ncd esp8266com\r\ngit clone https:\/\/github.com\/esp8266\/Arduino.git esp8266\r\ncd esp8266\/tools\r\npython get.py<\/pre>\n
Get the\u00a0WifiLink firmware<\/em> from Github<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Once that’s all installed, restart the Arduino IDE.<\/p>\n
In the board manager, under “ESP8266 modules”, select board “Arduino”. The other settings should be as follows:<\/p>\n
Board: \"Arduino\"\r\nFlash Size: \"4M (1M SPIFFS)\"\r\nModel: \"Star OTTO\"\r\nUpload speed: \"230400\" (for serial recovery) or \"9600\" (for network port)\r\nPort: the serial port (preferably) or the network port for the OTTO<\/pre>\n
\n
Flashing the ESP8266 via the\u00a0serial port\u00a0(preferable!):<\/strong><\/p>\n
If Wifi isn’t working right, this is the only<\/strong> easy way to fix things.<\/p>\n
Install the WiFi Link library via the library manager (1.0.1 or later)
\nBuild WiFi_Link\\examples\\Tools\\EspRecovery.ino<\/em> for the Star Otto and flash it normally.<\/p>\n
Note:<\/strong> In EspRecovery.ino<\/em>, we\u00a0see\u00a0SerialWiFi<\/em> referenced… which is defined in\u00a0arduino-library-wifilink\/src\/utility\/uart\/serial.h<\/em>\u00a0as an alias to\u00a0Serial.<\/em><\/p>\n
Load up ArduinoFirmwareEsp.ino<\/em> and target the ESP8266 Arduino device via serial (The key here is that the codeload for the Star OTTO using EspRecovery<\/em> will expect a 230400 baud rate).<\/p>\n
Uncomment the following line in config.h<\/em>:<\/p>\n
#define STAROTTO<\/pre>\n
For the purpose of seeing things work, change the BUILD_DATE value in config.h<\/em>\u00a0slightly. Don’t go overboard:<\/strong>\u00a0just change a digit. The fields are fixed-length and weird values can surprise you later with weird behavior from apps that depend on them (especially the version number).<\/p>\n
Compile and flash the firmware\u00a0over serial – it should work, and no weird errors either. If it fails to flash, check your settings. To force the ESP8266 into bootloader mode, unplug the Star OTTO, hold the ESP B\/L<\/strong> button, plug the board back in, and release the ESP B\/L<\/strong> button – the ESP8266 should now be in its bootloader mode, while the Star OTTO itself should be in normal mode, with the recovery script running. Try flashing the ESP8266 again.<\/p>\n
(Note: Even just holding the “ESP B\/L” button and resetting the board seems to do the trick… I suspect it’s a Windows thing, as the ESP32 is a tricky board to codeload as well on Windows. Sometimes it all “just works”, sometimes it needs that manual intervention.)<\/p>\n
Observe the Star OTTO’s wifi welcome page (refresh it – you might need to open it in a new browser instance). Notice the version number and date in the lower left…. did it change to what you changed it to? If so, that tells you it worked!<\/p>\n
\n
Flashing the ESP8266 via the network port (quirky):<\/strong><\/p>\n
While this works, it is rough around the edges. Also, if anything goes wrong you’ll need the serial method so learn that first!<\/p>\n
As above, make a tiny\u00a0change to the build date.<\/p>\n
When you flash over the network port, it does the following:<\/p>\n
Uploading......\r\n[many dots then long pause]\r\n12:36:52 [ERROR]: No Result!\r\n12:36:52 [ERROR]: No Result!<\/pre>\n
It appears to upload nonetheless.<\/p>\n
If you get messages like these:<\/p>\n
[ERROR]: No Answer\r\n[ERROR]: Listen Failed<\/pre>\n
It’s time to reset and\/or power cycle the Star OTTO and try again.<\/p>\n
Observe the change you made as it is reflected in the wifi webpage or functionality.<\/p>\n
\n
That’s basically it!<\/p>\n
Again, BE CAREFUL.<\/strong> I don’t think you can cause any problems that you can’t recover by flashing the ESP8266 again with good firmware, but I am not certain.<\/p>\n
\n
Update 1:<\/strong>\u00a0This updated the binary firmware, but does NOT upload any\u00a0data files (e.g., the HTML\u00a0and Javascript files). That’s because you need to flash SPIFFS as well!<\/p>\n
(In the process of this\u00a0I managed to screw up and then fix my ESP8266 flash image… and in the process I closed the last gap on how to fully re-flash the Star OTTO.)<\/em><\/p>\n
I used some old ESP8266 Arduino docs<\/a> as a starting point, then went to the arduino-esp8266fs-plugin<\/em> release page<\/a> and got and installed the latest one (0.3.0 currently).<\/p>\n
I noticed that the SPIFFS config file at<\/del>
\n hardware\\esp8266com\\esp8266\\cores\\esp8266\\spiffs\\spiffs_config.h<\/code><\/del>
\n suggests 2M SPIFFS, so I added a 4M (2M SPIFFS) entry in hardware\\esp8266com\\esp8266\\boards.txt<\/code><\/del><\/p>\n
That did not have the desired effect. Only the 4M (1M SPIFFS) setting seems to work properly.<\/p>\n
I started the Arduino IDE and ensured my settings were correct. At this point I still had the EspRecovery<\/em>\u00a0sketch running on the main MPU.<\/p>\n
I built and uploaded the ArduinoFirmwareEsp<\/em>\u00a0firmware to the ESP8266 as usual (entering\u00a0the ESP8266’s bootloader mode the usual way before upload).<\/p>\n
Then (taking care to again<\/em> enter the ESP8266’s bootloader mode) I used that plugin (via\u00a0Tools -> ESP8266 Sketch Data Upload<\/em>) to upload the SPIFFS image (that takes somewhat longer than the sketch).<\/p>\n
Finally, I switched to the (insecure!)\u00a0Arduino-Star-Otto-*****<\/em> network and ran\u00a0through the OTTO AP network setup again. It worked!<\/p>\n
That last step is necessary because the config is stored in SPIFFS (as… plaintext.) Every time I flashed I kept reverting it, which was a distraction. Remember:\u00a0if you change SPIFFS data, you’ll need to re-do the setup (the code alone shouldn’t affect the SPIFFS data block). If in doubt, upload both code and SPIFFS data.<\/strong><\/p>\n
For all this, in addition to making the Star OTTO more secure, serial config\u00a0would eliminate this back-and-forth between networks.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“An ESP8266? That’s easy!\u00a0Feel free to follow along with my simple step by step instructions. I make codeloading FUN!!” (with apologies to Strong Bad) Beware: There be dragons here! While […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[85,86,1],"tags":[90,151,147,146,149,148,150],"class_list":["entry","author-marty","post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-electronics","category-software-and-hardware-development","category-uncategorized","tag-arduino","tag-dragon","tag-esp8266","tag-espressif","tag-st-micro","tag-star-otto","tag-stm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.falatic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}