13.2.6. Firmware updates and recovery

The Viewer keeps the camera’s firmware manager, so a device can be recovered or re-provisioned in the field without the full IDE. It bundles the matching firmware release for every board and the loaders for every board family’s bootloader, and it detects the board and speaks the right protocol without being told.

Unlike the IDE, the Viewer does not nag to update: so a demonstration is never interrupted by an out-of-date prompt, whatever firmware the product ships stays in place. The firmware operations are available on demand from the Tools menu when you do want them.

13.2.6.1. Third-party boards and fleet updates

The Viewer supports third-party repositories, so a company shipping its own board in its own Viewer can keep a fleet of those cameras current in the field. This is the one exception to the no-nagging rule: a third-party board does get the out-of-date prompt and updates through the Viewer, because the update is the vendor’s own – served from the URL in the repository’s manifest, not from OpenMV. OpenMV’s own boards still never prompt. The Viewer checks a repository’s firmware channel at launch and offers newer firmware when the vendor publishes it; it does not pull down the examples, models, or stubs a repository may also carry, since the Viewer has no interface for them.

13.2.6.2. Loading firmware

Tools → Load Custom Firmware flashes a firmware binary – or a board’s build-output .zip bundle – from disk, the way to put a product’s own firmware onto a replacement camera. The dialog offers the same options as the IDE’s: erase the internal flash filesystem, and reset the ROM file system.

13.2.6.3. Loading a ROM file system

Tools → Load ROMFS onto OpenMV Cam writes a .img ROM file system image – a product’s models and assets – to the camera, so the Viewer can restore a device’s data as well as its firmware.

13.2.6.4. Recovering a bricked camera

A camera whose firmware is broken enough that it no longer shows up as a serial port can still be saved, because the bootloader sits below the firmware and survives anything short of hardware damage. When connect finds no camera, the Viewer asks whether a bricked camera is attached and walks you through recovery: you select the board type, the Viewer drives the board’s bootloader interface, and the bundled release firmware goes on. Tools → Force enter OpenMV Cam bootloader does the reboot-into-bootloader step explicitly for a camera that still connects.