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.

Building

Run:

make all

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.