Can not update RTK Surveyor

Kits
1

I have two RTK Surveyors ofthe first batch. They report 4 MB Flash.

If I upload the latest binary, the device stops functioning and will continuously reset with the error message:

rst:0x3 (SW_RESET),boot:0x13 (SPI_FAST_FLASH_BOOT)

This suggests and overflow of the FLASH rom.

Also the oldest available versions of the binaries (1.10) will not function and result in a continuous reset.

After compiling the software with Arduino IDE while setting the flash size to 4MB I can get it to seemingly function.

On windows I will have to comment out WiFi support, otherwise it will not compile at all.

On Linux it states that the sketch is too big when including WiFi.

However whatever I do, it will not render me useable device since it will not even communicate through Bluetooth (WiFi obviously doe snot function since it will not compile at all).

I now have two bricked devices.

Questions:

  1. Is it right to think the oldest versions of RTK Surveyor have 4 MB Flash and newer versions have 16 MB?

  2. And if so, is there a version of the software available that will work with these 4 MB Surveyors?

  3. Is there any other solution to get these devices functioning again?

2

So, the first batch does not support the latest firmware? Team sparkfun, plz answer.

3

Hi hscholten,

My apologies, I missed your post. Your 4MB Surveyors can still enjoy all the modern firmware features, we just have to get you on the right partition file. Information about updating the 4MB RTK Surveyors can be found here: https://docs.sparkfun.com/SparkFun_RTK_ … -surveyors

Please use the GUI or CLI firmware update methods. Sounds like you may be exclusively Linux/CLI so forgive me, the documentation has a gap: ‘./bin/RTK_Surveyor.ino.partitions.bin’ needs to be replaced by the partition file over here: https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun_RT … ns_4MB.bin

Congrats to you for compiling the source and changing the partitions! That is a huge task that very few people have accomplished.

4

Thank you for your answer.

However I do not know where the “this folder” that contains changed partition table min_spiffs.csv is to be found

A search on GitHub https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun_RT … _spiff.csv did return: We couldn’t find any code matching ‘min_spiff.csv’ in sparkfun/SparkFun_RTK_Firmware

I have also tried tp find it in the project files on my computer that I have downloaded from Github (obviously it was not found if it is not in the original repo)

This is my current min_spiff.csv at C:\Users[name]\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp32\hardware\esp32\2.0.3\tools\partitions:

Name, Type, SubType, Offset, Size, Flags

nvs, data, nvs, 0x9000, 0x5000,

otadata, data, ota, 0xe000, 0x2000,

app0, app, ota_0, 0x10000, 0x1E0000,

app1, app, ota_1, 0x1F0000,0x1E0000,

spiffs, data, spiffs, 0x3D0000,0x30000,

5

In addition:

  1. When trying to compile with WiFi support I get the error message: sdCardCapacity was not declared

Indeed sdCardCapacity can only be found once, it is in the Form tab.

  1. I now compile on Linux and then copy the RTK_Surveyor.ino.bin from the temp dir to Windows and upload it with flash_download_tool_3.9.2.exe
6

Hi,

This is my current min_spiff.csv

You may be using the wrong setup. Please select ‘Minimal SPIFFS (1.9MB APP with OTA/190KB SPIFFS)’ and read https://docs.sparkfun.com/SparkFun_RTK_ … #windows_1

The app3M_fat9M_16MB.csv file for compiling into the 16MB module with SPIFFs is here: https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun_RT … M_16MB.csv

The 4MB partition file is now available on the main branch here: https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun_RT … naries/bin

The CLI method for 4MB docs have been updated: https://docs.sparkfun.com/SparkFun_RTK_ … -surveyors

sdCardCapacity was not declared

This was because the sdFat library changed. Please pull the latest v2.3 firmware. We fixed this here: https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun_RT … a0f0c49d3d

  1. I now compile on Linux and then copy the RTK_Surveyor.ino.bin from the temp dir to Windows and upload it with flash_download_tool_3.9.2.exe

Ok, but that may not work because the partition binary may not be correct. We recommend using these instructions: https://docs.sparkfun.com/SparkFun_RTK_ … -surveyors

7

Thank you for your answer.

I have now been able to update the devices with the provided 4MB 2.3 version.

That gives me functioning devices again, I’m happy with that.

But…

Although I do not need to compile myself anymore, I’m intrigued and still have tried to compile on Linux.

With the Minimal SPIFFS (1.9MB APP with OTA/190KB SPIFFS) partion table as provided by Espressif compiling halts with a memory error (not surprising).

With the Huge App (3MB file, no OTA/1 mb SPIFF) partition table it will compile.

But I have not tried to upload since I expect this to be not compatible with the provided files for updating the devices.

However it is proof that I can now compile the 2.3 version of the firmware with a 3MB application partition and the sdFAT issue indeed is solved in the 2.3 firmware source.

So what I’m still missing is the updated/changed min_spiffs.csv that will give me a 3MB app partition.

If you can find the time to provide this, I can try to compile the firmware myself just to satisfy my curiosity.