dotbot-provision

A command-line tool for provisioning DotBot devices and gateways.

It can fetch, config, and flash pre-built firmwares from repos SwarmIT and mari.

Requirements

This tool shells out to external flashing utilities:

• nrfjprog (Nordic nRF Command Line Tools) for nRF5340 flashing
• pyocd for DAPLink/J-Link OB programmer flashing
• JLinkExe (SEGGER J-Link) for STM32 bootloader flashing

Make sure these are installed and available on your PATH.

Installation

pip install dotbot-provision

Usage: dotbot-provision [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  A tool for provisioning DotBot devices and gateways.

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  fetch          Fetch firmware assets into bin/<fw-version>/.
  flash          Flash firmware + config using versioned bin layout.
  flash-bringup  Flash J-Link OB or DAPLink programmer firmware.
  flash-hex      Flash explicit app/net hex files.
  read-config    Read config from the device.

Deploying a testbed

First, download firmware assets:

dotbot-provision fetch --fw-version v0.7.0

Then, to flash a DotBot-v3 while specifying a certain Network ID:

dotbot-provision flash --device dotbot-v3 --fw-version v0.7.0 --network-id 0100

You can also pass -a <fw-name> to flash, in addition to bootloader and netcore, a default app firmware:

dotbot-provision flash --device dotbot-v3 --fw-version v0.7.0 --network-id 0100 -a motors

And to flash a Mari Gateway:

dotbot-provision flash --device gateway --fw-version v0.7.0 --network-id 0100

... and it's done!

Deploying a testbed on fresh robots

If your robot just arrived from factory, first you have to run the flash-bringup command. You can concatenate it with a regular flash command so that all happens in sequence with minimal manual work. Like this:

dotbot-provision flash-bringup --programmer-firmware jlink -d ../../../programer-files-dotbot && \
  dotbot-provision flash -d dotbot-v3 -f local -n 0100 -s 77

... where the -s flag stands for --sn-starting-digits and serves as a pattern to identify the connected programming probe. In this case it solves a problem where the flash command incorrectly selects the external J-Link probe instead of the dotbot's (most DotBots come from factory with a serial number starting by 77).