NoFUSS

NoFUSS is a Firmware Update Server for ESP8266 modules. It defines a protocol and its implementation as a PHP service and a C++ client library so your devices can check for updates, download them and flash them autonomously.

The protocol

Current version of the protocol is simple. The client device does a GET request to a custom URL along with some headers defining:

header	description	example
X-ESP8266-MAC	Device MAC address	5C:CF:7F:8B:6B:26
X-ESP8266-DEVICE	Device type	SENSOR
X-ESP8266-VERSION	Application version	0.1.0
X-ESP8266-BUILD	Application build	611cdf3

The URL can be anywhere your device can reach:

http://192.168.1.10/nofuss

Here you have an example call using cURL:

curl -H "X-ESP8266-MAC:5C:CF:7F:8C:1E:6F" -H "X-ESP8266-VERSION:0.1.0" -H "X-ESP8266-DEVICE:TEST" http://192.168.1.10/nofuss

The response is a JSON object. If there are no updates available it will be empty (that is: '{}'). Otherwise it will contain info about where to find the new firmware binaries:

{
    'version': '0.1.1',
    'firmware': '/firmware/sonoff-0.1.1.bin',
    'spiffs': '/firmware/sonoff-0.1.1-spiffs.bin'
}

Binaries URLs (for the firmware and the SPIFFS file system) are relative to the server URL, so following with the example, the device will first download the SPIFFS binary from:

http://192.168.1.10/nofuss/firmware/sonoff-0.1.1-spiffs.bin

flash it and if everything went fine it will download the firmware from:

http://192.168.1.10/nofuss/firmware/sonoff-0.1.1.bin

flash it too and then restart the board.

Installing the server

PHP

The PHP server implementation depends on Slim Framework, Monolog and Akrabat IP Address Middleware. They are all set as dependencies in the composer.json file, so you just have to type php composer.phar install from the server folder.

Next you will have to configure your webserver to configure the URLs. If you are using Apache then all you have to do is create a new service pointing to the server/public folder. The .htaccess file there will take care of the rest. If you are using Nginx the create a new site file like this one:

server {
	listen 80 default_server;
	server_name nofuss.local;
	root /<path_to_project>/server/php/public/;
	try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
	index index.php;
	include global/php5-fpm.conf;
}

Make sure the server has permissions to write on the logs folder.

PHP using Docker

You can use the docker-compose.yml file in the root of the repository to rise an instance of a local NoFUSS server using Nginx and PHP7-FPM. Just type:

docker-compose up

The docker container will use the code under server/php and, in particular, the database in server/php/data/versions.json.

NodeJS

User Alex Suslov ported the NoFUSS Server to NodeJS. You can check his repo node-nofuss repo on GitHub.

Node-red

There is a flow under server/node-red/firmware_server.json that implements a server using CouchDB as the database backend. You will need several external palette modulee. Please install missing palettes when importing the flow.

Versions

The versions info is stored in the data/versions.json file. This file contains an array of objects with info about version matching and firmware files.

The origin key contains filters. The server will apply those filters to the requester info. Version matching is done using different operators:

• ge or min: Reported version should be greater or equal than the target version
• gt: Striclty greater than
• eq: Strictly equal
• lt or max: Less than target version
• le: Less or equal

Notice max and min are there for backwards compatibility and they are not symetric: "more or equal" for minimum version number and "less or equal" for maximum version number.

An asterisk (*) means "any" and it's equivalent to not specifying that key. If specified, the device and mac keys must match exactly. The build_not filter works slightly different. If defined and different than * it will match any request with non-empty X-ESP8266-BUILD header that's different from the defined in the rule. This is meant for different build of the same version (problably a development one?) and to avoid a loop it requires the requested to report the build explicitly.

If you define no filter (i.e. the origin key is empty) every request will match.

The target key contains info about version number for the new firmware and paths to the firmware files relative to the public folder. The firmware key must be always present. If there is no binary for "firmware" just leave it empty.

[
    {
        "origin": {
            "mac": "5C:CF:7F:8B:6B:26",
            "device": "TEST",
            "gt": "*",
            "lt": "0.1.1",
            "build_not": "3fe56a4"
        },
        "target": {
            "version": "0.1.1",
            "firmware": "/firmware/test-0.1.1.bin",
            "spiffs": ""
        }
    }
]

Using the client

The client library depends on Benoit Blanchon's ArduinoJson library. It is set as a dependency in the platformio.ini file, so if you use PlatformIO it will automatically download.

To use it you only have to configure the global NoFUSSClient object with proper server URL, device name and version in your setup:

NoFUSSClient.setFwUrl(FIRMWARE_URL);
NoFUSSClient.setDevice(DEVICE);
NoFUSSClient.setVersion(VERSION);

And then call every so often NoFUSSClient.handle() to check for updates. You can also monitor the update flow providing a callback function to the onMessage method. Check the basic.cpp example for a real usage.