espota-server

espota-server is an HTTP server that can hold firmware for flashing with the ESP8266 Arduino firmware. It's useful when you have many ESP8266-based devices in the field and want them to download their own firmware to update themselves, rather than you having to push firmware to each one separately.

The main difference between the espota-server and any other HTTP server is that it only serves firmware to the device if there's a newer version of the firmware available. If there's no newer version, it just responds with a "no new version" and the device goes on its merry way.

Installation

To install espota-server, just compile it if you have Rust installed, or get the latest compiled binary from the nightlies page and drop it somewhere on your PATH.

How it works

It's pretty simple, just follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you're using the HTTP OTA library in your code, with a firmware URL like http://myserver:36942/projectname (where projectname is your project's name).
  2. Run the espota-server somewhere.
  3. Drop a file called projectname-version.bin in the directory where you ran the server. Not necessarily the directory where the server binary is located, just where you ran the server. For example, this file should be called espota-100.bin.
  4. That's it! Whenever your device attempts to update its firmware, the server will respond with a firmware file only if there's a file of the same or a later version in the directory. For example, if a device on version 8 requests an update, and versions 7 to 22 are available on the server, the server will respond with version 22. Of course, this means you only need to keep one file from each project on the server at any time.

NoFUSS protocol

The server implements the NoFUSS protocol, so you can use it to update ESPurna-based devices. To get it working, just go to your NoFUSS section in ESPurna and enter your server's address with the /nofuss path:

http://myserver:36942/nofuss

The firmware files need to be named DEVICENAME-1.2.3.bin. For example, my Sonoff Basic identifies itself as ESPURNA-SONOFFBASI, so my firmware is named ESPURNA-SONOFF_BASI-1.13.2.bin. If the firmware update fails, just make sure you've named your files properly and put them in the directory espota-server starts up in. That's it!

Miscellanea

Please send pull requests/comments/issues if you have any. That is all.

-- Stavros