Originally published at: Understanding Golioth OTA Firmware Updates - Golioth
Over-the-Air (OTA) firmware updates are table stakes for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Once a device is in the field, OTA means you can make changes by updating the firmware remotely. The ability to update devices remotely is great, but that alone is the bare minimum of functionality. Options for targeting specific devices for each firmware update are crucial to building a fleet that scales. For example, at Golioth we use a small subset of our deployed fleet to test releases before rolling them out to all devices. In some cases we have different hardware in the same fleet that each need different binaries. And when adding new features we conditionally roll out release candidates to certain team members for testing. All of these features are built into Golioth and ready for you to use. Recently one of our customers opened a forum thread asking how firmware version, device blueprints, and device tags work together to determine the OTA each device receives. It’s a great question that we’ll dive into today! What are OTA Firmware Updates? Over-the-Air (OTA) firmware updates are a method of using a network connection to send a device a new firmware version that it then validates and runs. At Golioth, we’ve used multiple types of network connections to accomplish this, including cellular, WiFi, Ethernet, and Thread. Our Golioth Firmware SDK demonstrates the feature, using MCUboot to store two copies of firmware (the currently running version, and the newly received update). Each image is cryptographically signed so it can be verified for authenticity and integrity before the device uses the new image. Golioth applies firmware updates on the device side using the semantic version number. The Golioth…
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