New Beta firmware updater 1.17.0.b0/b1

[Xykon]

Hello everyone,

We've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes over the last few months and one of the things I worked on is the firmware updater.

The current stable version was built with Python2 and QT4 which is no longer supported. I started updating to Python3 and QT5 more than 2 years ago and finally believe I have a somewhat stable update.

I started deploying 1.17.0.b0 for Linux and MacOS a few days ago but there were some additional issues on Windows.

I have not tested the 32bit versions for Linux as I currently don't have any VM available for this. I'm thinking to drop 32bit support and I'd be interested to know if anyone would miss them.

I also made some updates on the software server, mainly removing the Sigfox registration part because Sigfox decided to no longer offer the trial connectivity.

If you are using Sigfox and have your own ID/KEY pair, you can use the pycom.sigfox() method to store them on the device, for example:

pycom.sigfox_info(id='AB12CD45',pac='AABBCCDDEEFF0011',public_key='00112233445566778899AABBCCDDEEFF',private_key='00112233445566778899AABBCCDDEEFF', force=True)

After a reset you should be able to use Sigfox. It is possible that the firmware updater will overwrite your own Sigfox credentials, I will look at that next week.

Please let me know if you encounter any issues with the new version. Thanks a lot.

[ErickM]

Hello, im new ok this of pycom, and i can't find a way to update the device, the software say access denied.
im not ussign the expansion board, idk if it's for that i needed do something more before updating.

[Vin883]

Hi Xycon,

Since few days, I have some issues on the 1.16.6 udater which does not gives me Sigfox ID and PAC after firmware update on Fipy modules.
I'm internet connected during operation and do no install firmware from local file.

I also cannot install pybytes legacy firmwares, updater only gives me the choice between 1.20+ versions, in online mode. It was possible few week ago

Is there any other way to get Sigfox PAC/ID than firmware updater?

Regards

[livius]

@Xykon said in New Beta firmware updater 1.17.0.b0/b1:

it's good to start testing the updater to make sure everything is working

Testing by Pycom team?

Do not take me wrong, updater tool probably is now much much better, and gain new quality.
But to test it by us, we need to have new firmware release, without it i suppose near noone can test it as most have recent firmware already installed ;-)

[Xykon]

@livius I understand that but there were some problems with the current updater:

a) It didn't work on any Linux distributions released in the last 2+ years.
b) It was impossible to release any updates to the current version on any OS because the build tools are no longer available.

The new updater also has support for the esp32-s3 chip series, and while I don't have a release date for the F01-S3, it's good to start testing the updater to make sure everything is working.

Firmware wise we are focusing on what we call internally the "next generation" firmware, which is based on MicroPython 1.19.1. Our priority is to support the F01-S3 first and then add support for the current modules based on the esp32.

[livius]

@Xykon
Hi. Good to see some activity.
At first sorry for strong words, but announcing firmware updater tool without any firmware update have no sense for me.

[Xykon]

I now released 1.17.0.b2 for Windows. It was all looking good in my Virtual Machine but when I checked on my Windows PC at home the window was way too small.

For now I disabled the fixed size completely so you can resize the window if needed.

If anyone has problems with the updater showing at the wrong size please provide some screenshots and details of your monitor size & resolution.

Thanks a lot.