Building¶
Introduction¶
otb-iot is intended to be built on linux and has been successfully built on various distributions including:
- Ubuntu
- Raspbian
- Arch Linux
Quick-Start¶
Plug your ESP8266 device into a USB port on your linux machine (or, if you’re using VirtualBox, map the USB device through from your host to your guest).
Then run:
dmesg | grep usb
You should see output like this (in this example I am using a Wemos D1 mini - the precise text with vary depending on the USB TTL device you are using):
[90279.476382] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[90279.476412] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for generic
[90279.480721] usbcore: registered new interface driver ch341
[90279.480755] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for ch341-uart
[90279.481709] usb 2-1.8: ch341-uart converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Note the value provided right at the end - here ttyUSB1 - you’ll need this in a sec.
Install docker if not already installed:
curl https://get.docker.com/|sh
You may need to log out and log back in again at this point so that your user is part of the docker group.
Run the container containing pre-built otb-iot images. Change <usb-device> to the value you noted earlier - in my example this would be ttyUSB1:
docker run --rm -ti --device /dev/<usb-device>:/dev/ttyUSB0 piersfinlayson/otbiot
Once the container has been pulled and run, Flash the device and connect to it over serial:
make flash_initial && make con
Use Ctrl-] to terminate the serial connection.
When you want to terminate the container run:
exit
Do It Yourself¶
If you’d rather download and build everything yourself read on.
Pre-requisites¶
Install the esp-open-sdk by following the instructions here: https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk
Getting the Code¶
Get the code from: https://github.com/piersfinlayson/otb-iot
git clone https://github.com/piersfinlayson/otb-iot --recursive
cd otb-iot
Configuring the Makefile¶
You may need to modify various values within the Makefile - in particular:
SDK_BASE ?= /opt/esp-open-sdk # Should point at where you installed the esp-open-sdk
SERIAL_PORT ?= /dev/ttyUSB0 # Port your ESP8266 is connected to for programming
Alternatively export shell variables to override the values in the Makefile:
export SDK_BASE=/opt/esp-open-sdk
export SERIAL_PORT=/dev/ttyUSB0
You could add these lines to your .bash_profile file.
Installing¶
Ensure your ESP8266 device is connected to the serial port you configured earlier and run:
make flash_initial
This command will erase the flash and then write:
- the bootloader
- ESP8266 SDK init data
- the application
- a backup “factory” application which can be used to recover the device using a factory reset
First Steps¶
You should now be ready to take your first steps with otb-iot. Continue here.