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Python HTTP OTA Server

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Xavier MULLER edited this page Oct 6, 2019 · 14 revisions

Introduction

Sonoff-Tasmota firmware can be ugraded using 'Firmware Upgrade' option on main menu and selecting an OTA URL to fetch (and flash) a new firmware on the device.

To use this nice feature users need to deploy an HTTP server with Apache, Nginx or other software solutions switching to superuser privileges and installing additional packages (and libraries) on his own Linux/Windows box.

Python makes available Flask (micro)framework (http://flask.pocoo.org) that can be used at different levels of complexity due to its modular architecture. A simple HTTP server (hello-world) can be developed only by six lines of Python code (http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/1.0/quickstart/#a-minimal-application).

A Flask application to offer Sonoff-Tasmota firmware images for OTA upgrades is available in 'tools' directory (https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/tree/development/tools/fw_server/fw-server.py).

Requirements

  • Python3 (follow instruction related to your operating system)
  • netifaces and Flask libraries - can be installed by 'pip' package manager:
pip install netifaces flask

Instructions:

Copy Sonoff-Tasmota firmware binary files in 'tools/fw' directory. A set of prebuilt files can be downloaded by Sonoff-Tasmota release page:

Configure your Sonoff-Tasmota device with your fw-server URL:

Firmware Upgrade -> Upgrade by web server:
     http://<ip_address>:5000/sonoff-minimal.bin

or use the following commands:

otaurl http://<ip_address>:5000/sonoff-minimal.bin
upgrade 1

Usage:

To start Python HTTP server:

python fw-server.py -d <net_iface>   (default: eth0)
  or
python fw-server.py -i <ip_address>

Example:

python fw-server.py -d wlan0
  or
python fw-server.py -i 192.168.1.1

Note

On Windows operating system it is advisable to use '-i' option because Windows uses UUID name for network interfaces that are not so easy to type...

Linux server:

If your MQTT broker is hosted on a local server, you may want Tasmota OTA to work the same, as a service. Here is how to achieve this:

  • Copy the python script on the linux server
$ sudo su
# mkdir /srv/tasmota/fw_server/fw
# cd /srv/tasmota/fw_server
# wget https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/tree/development/tools/fw_server/fw-server.py
  • Create a new file '/etc/systemd/system/tasmota.service' and copy those lines :
[Unit]
Description=Local OTA server for Tasmota
Requires=network.target
After=network.target multi-user.target
 
[Service]
#User=XYZ
Type=idle
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python /srv/tasmota/fw_server/fw-server.py -d wlan0
Restart=on-failure
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
  • User rights

We have created those files and directories as root but it is not desirable, the option User=XYZ should be uncommented and XYZ replaced by you usernane.

In the following commands too, replace 4 time XYZ by your username :

# chown -hR XYZ:XYZ /srv/tasmota
# chown XYZ:XYZ /etc/systemd/system/tasmota.service
  • Run the service
# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl enable tasmota.service
# systemctl start tasmota.service
  • Check the service is active and runnning.
# systemctl status tasmota.service
  • Test of the server

To feed the linux server, we're now able to copy new firmwares in the folder /srv/tasmota/fw_server/fw with XYZ user rights. It can be done using scp or samba for instance. Let's upload firmware.bin into the folder, the service can be tested from any browser by issuing the address http://<ip_address>:5000/firmware.bin were <ip_address> is the adress of the linux server. If you reboot the server, the service should startup again.

  • After a power failure, local HTTP OTA server may become unresponsive

If your notice that the OTA mechanism is broken, try at first to download the served file from a browser. If you can't, then check the status of the service as said above. After a power failure, it may happen that your wlan0 IP resolves to an invalid value like 169.254.5.153 because your LAN gateway was not ready. Login as root in a Terminal session and enter:

# systemctl restart tasmota.service
> systemctl status tasmota.service

if you recognize the IP of your server on the last status line, it should be OK now... OTA service restored!

Now if you want PlatformIO to be able to upload your compiled binaries to the local server, you'll still have to setup ssh with ssh-keygen in order to use the Tasmota script pio/sftp-uploader.py without password.

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