mcuw/esp8266-ota-wifi

Update ESP8266 via OTA. Use the ArduinoOTA

ESP8266 OTA with WIFI

This template provides the OTA (over the air) feature of ESP8266. The firmware is build with github actions based on the ESP8266-ghbuild-template. You have to upload the firmware only once with the serial port.

ESP-8266 dev board

Some development boards (ESP-201/ ESP-01/ ESP-07) are not able to use OTA because the flash size is too low: 512 KB

You need a memory upgrade for OTA, e.g.: 4 MB

Buy (affiliate link supports project w/o extra cost): Windbond flash W25x40

New board configuration esp-8266-4M2M to allow OTA for sketches with ~1019KB https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/blob/master/tools/sdk/ld/eagle.flash.4m2m.ld

New board configuration esp-8266-4M3M to allow OTA for sketches with ~512KB https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/blob/master/tools/sdk/ld/eagle.flash.4m3m.ld

How to get the real flash informations

There is a scretch to check that you installed the flash successfully ... For that uncomment src_dir in platformio.ini

src_dir = ./examples/real-memory

Why should you want to use OTA?

Usually you can download a new firmware with the serial port. In case you already placed your hardware into the target place then it can be difficult to remove it again.

Another use case is if you want a replacement of the serial cable and to flash the firmware wireless and without the cumbersome boot mode change with a switch. It is also much quicker with the WIFI speed to download a firmware.

Do you have another use case in mind? To be continued ...

Get Started

copy configs and set up

cp upload_params_example.ini upload_params.ini

cp src/credentials_example.h src/credentials.h

Telnet to debug OTA

How to debug? If you are only connected with WiFi then you can connect with telnet, e.g. call

telnet 192.168.4.1

For exit telnet write q to exit then press enter.

For reset ESP write r then press enter.

Links

Espressif: https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp8266

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP8266

readthedocs OTA: https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ota_updates/readme.html

Tutorials:

Andreas Spiess - ESP32 OTA tutorial with tricks incl. OTA debugging How-To replace the flash: Andreas Spiess - ESP-01/ESP-07 4Mbyte Memory Upgrade and OTA