Electron OTA Firmware updates after Sleep

General
1

This has been discussed a lot in the past but I am not finding a clear path to a solution, if it exits.

I am in the evaluation stage with one Electron. It is asleep most of the time, waking every 15 minutes to publish to Thingspeak.

In this configuration I have to be with the device to do development firmware updates.

I have re-configured the device as a “product” via the console. The hope was this would allow OTA updates when it awakes. No luck so far, I see message where at least one device needs to have the FW already install before an update will occur but I have only one device right now.

I am also not clear on the pricing difference that occurs when registering a device as a “product”.

Thanks

Rich

2

For cellular devices, there is no pricing difference between a product device cloud subscription and a developer device SIM card, both are US$2.99 per month.

Electrons and E series devices can get a system firmware update from the cloud, but the caveat is that it only happens on a full session negotiation. When you wake from sleep, a session resume is done, and you won’t get firmware update.

This will be fixed in the future with more options for flashing devices that were asleep, but for now the workaround is once a day to force a full session negotiation. This will cause it to get a product firmware update. Basically do this once a day:

Particle.publish("spark/device/session/end", "", PRIVATE);

You don’t want to do this every wake, as it uses about 3K of data.

2 Likes
3

Rick,
Thank you for the help. I will try the provided work-around.

Rich