About This Training
The idea of over-the-air (OTA) updates has been around for a long time but it’s only been the last few years where it has been a subject of focus within the connected device development community. There are numerous open-source and commercial solutions as well as lots of DIY hacks out there. We’ll start with a brief overview of the more popular architectures for supporting OTA in embedded devices. While we will focus on Linux-based solutions, the architectures will be more broadly applicable.
The number one requirement for any OTA system, implemented at scale, is to be resilient in the face of unpredictable power cycles. We will discuss how the OSTree system ensures atomicity and power safety when updating the contents of a root filesystem. We will provide examples showing how the system behaves when power cycles occur during various phases of the update process as well as how it recovers. We’ll discuss when downloads will need to be redone as well as when the system is able to recover without retransmitting data.
We will then broaden our view and examine how the OSTree infrastructure is used as part of the Toradex Torizon platform implementing a full end-to-end OTA system for connected Linux devices.
Additional Info: The target audience for this talk will be system designers who are considering OTA requirements for their systems to help them understand some of the complexities involved in an robust, atomic over-the-air update.