Toradex Releases Over-The-Air Updates for TorizonCore under its Toradex Labs Innovation Brand
The engineers at Toradex have publicly released an experimental form of their Over-The-Air (OTA) solution under Toradex Labs.
Modern embedded systems require a reliable and secure method to deliver software updates remotely. Toradex aims to do this by publishing critical operating-system updates to customers with devices running TorizonCore, an easy-to-use industrial-grade Linux OS. The machine will provide full control over which updates so when these updates are pushed for their devices using a web interface. Additionally, customers can push their own updates for their devices utilizing the same OTA system.
Managing deployed devices is created easy by providing a high-level look at all devices as well as their current status. Grouping devices together into fleets is supported and makes managing updates for a lot of devices easy. Every device publishes information as much as the server which could prove useful for evaluating device health, inconsistencies in deployed devices, etc.
Toradex wants to reduce your time-to-market and decrease the general risk inherent in implementing or integrating this feature yourself. The unit update mechanism updates all levels of software, in the hardware device-tree layers as much as the application. Using this system together with the Docker container functionality supplied by TorizonCore establishes a device like a 100% updatable, and remotely managed platform!
The system itself is based upon the Open-Source Automotive-Grade project maintained by HERE.com (formerly Advanced Telematic Systems) known as OTA Community Edition.
The system leverages the safety framework of Uptane to secure and verify updates received around the device. It is designed to be fault-tolerant and can withstand drops in network connectivity, power-outages, etc. It's also a suitable option for devices which have limited or lightweight data connections such as a cellular network. The updates are differential, which minimizes how big an update by only transferring the pieces of an update which are diverse from what already exists around the device.