Boot Firmware per Hotkey on switch on the cardputer (ADV)

[Dtrieb]

Would be possible that we can save a letter for the firmware and if If we pressed this letter
p.e. :

B

and switch on the cardputer (ADV) then it starts the launcher and the direct p.e.:

Bruce ### Firmware from SD Card?

[bmorcelli]

This is a good idea.. but it hasn't been implemented..

If you could give more insights about it, maybe I can think about how I could add it into the firmware

[Dtrieb]

I add a few firmware on the SD-Card p.e.

• Bruce
• Bus Pirate
• Ghost ESP
• MiniAcid

So I want give this firmwares a letter p.e.

• B -> Bruce
• P -> Bus Pirate
• G -> Ghost ESP
• M -> MiniAcid

And now I would start it like the Launcher with POWER + OK (RETURN)
POWER + B starts Bruce direct
POWER + M starts MiniAcid direct

and so on...

[LukasGallenberger]

Building on the idea i'd take it a step further and also implement 2 new features: Insta-Boot and Default Firmware

Insta-Boot: Here the bootloader screen is skipped entirely and the device boots into the installed firmware instantly. This would be done by not pressing a button at all.

Default Firmware: In a scenario where a user has his own firmware which he has perfectly tailored to his usecase but needed another firmware for another purpose and then puts the device aways. Once they pick it up the next day they will have forgotten they had another firmware installed and would want their firmware to boot. This option would allow the user to select a firmware.bin as the default which always gets booted unless another button is held. If necessary a flash will happen.
What this mechanism would need is way to figure out if the wanted firmware is already installed so it doesn't get flashed again every time. I don't know if this is implemented yet.

[konsumer]

I may be misunderstanding things, but I think the way Launcher works, it burns the requested firmware into the "OTA0" flash-mem, to make it bootable, and this space is limited (3 small: firmware + 2xOTA, 1 large: firmware + no OTA, etc.) This means that the only "instant-boot" option is the 1 "installed firmware", and maybe 1 other, if they are both small (for default vs next boot.) We could reduce the delay-time on the Launcher, and not show the splash, but as it is, I don't think you can really hot-swap them.

There are already some large firmware that can't spare any OTA-space (and won't work with the swapping-scheme used here.) OTA1 (the 2nd one) is also often used for things like persistent settings (wifi, etc) which can also throw a wrench in "2 OTAs and a firmware" schemes.

I found this video about OTA interesting, for what it was originally designed for.

If you have the OTA code enabled, you can do this in platformio:

pio run --target upload --upload-port IP_ADDRESS_HERE or mDNS_NAME.local

Update: this also has a good description.

maybe an alternative that would serve the same purpose:

"recent" or "favorite" section, that stores a shorter list of of bins on SD - so you don't have to click as many keys, and look through a dir to find it. maybe also an option to keep this at the forefront (instead of other menu options, or even the splash) and instead of a whole per-bin menu, it just silently installs and reboots when user hits enter. This wouldn't get around the fact that you need to install it, but make it easier to jump into a different bin, especially if you just have a few you actually use. It's only a few seconds to install a firmware, so I dunno if it's so bad. This could be triggered with hotkey, and you'd still have to wait for it to install, but it'd be more direct, in terms of UI. This could be called "boot menu mode" or something, and maybe you get back into regular Launcher from the list, or a key (ESC?)

[konsumer]

I think #292 is related.