Electron: Product Updates, OTA flashing and SEMI-Automatic Mode

[maxmax]

Hey Guys,
I ran into some problems with OTA Updates on a “product” (~90 Electrons).

The Electron boots up every hour, takes a measurement and every 12th hour it connects to the cloud and transmits all data in one string. Because of that I am running it in Semi-Automatic mode, so it doesn’t connect to the cloud everytime it boots up.
Everything has been working fine so far, the only problem is - what about OTA updates?

I have included particle.process() in my code with a delay-time in order to make sure all the data is sent to the cloud. I always thought that particle.process() also includes checking for new updates (and installing them).

This doesn’t seem to be the case - so how can I check for updates and install them? And at which point in my code would it make sense? Probably in the end right?

I would be grateful if someone could point me into the right direction, thats all I need =)

Cheers
Max

[Moors7]

Haven’t personality used them yet, but these might be of interest: https://docs.particle.io/reference/firmware/photon/#ota-updates

[maxmax]

Does "enable Updates" mean 'generally' enabling automatic updates or enabling the update process in this specific run?
Or does the Electron just start updating?

I just found this:

Electron 0.5.2 System.updatesPending()

Usually when your device was notified of an update you need to actively stay awake longer than 4sec - more like 30~60sec. An OTA flash will not stop your code from running during the download phase, so if you send your device back to sleep your OTA will fail.

Does this mean, I'll just check whether there are updates pending and if thats the case, I'll just give it delay of 1-2 minutes to make sure the update installs properly.

The only thing I am wondering is, WHEN the update process starts and how to make sure my code is executed first.

EDIT:

Software updates for sleeping devices

Could you just try a longer wake periode e.g. once per day or once every ten wakes? If you are still in the middle of development, you might be able to accept a bit more power consumption, just for the sake of shorter dev cycles, and once you got a stable state, having a once in a while check cycle might still be acceptable. Since we don’t know your code I’d have to guess, but if you were using SYSTEM_THREAD(ENABLED) you must be aware of the asynchronous nature of your code and the cloud tasks…

I just found this and it (kind of) answered my question.

I will just insert the code I mentioned above (longer delay when update is available) and that should be it, right?