How to update the firmware

Warning

The firmware update should only be performed when connected to the VPU via the ETH0 interface and using a static IP address. It is recommended to use the default static IP address 192.168.0.69.

Download the firmware

The firmware image is available on the ifm.com website. Navigate to the site and follow the steps below:

Create an account (if you do not already have one) and log in.
Use the search bar to find the article number (OVP80x or OVP81x). This is also valid if you have pre-release sample units, for example M04239.
Navigate to the article page an click on the “Downloads” tab.
Select the firmware from the list. It will start downloading the file.

Starting firmware is version < 1.0.0

When updating to a firmware version 1.0.0 or above, starting with a firmware version below 1.0.0, please refer to the migration guide.

Starting firmware is version >= 1.0.0

(Optional) Save the current configuration

Depending on the starting and target firmware versions, the configuration might not be fully preserved after an update. To make sure you do not lose your configuration, we recommend saving it locally before performing the update.

You can for example do so using the command line interface:

ifm3d dump > config_save.json

With the ifmVisionAssistant

Download the ifmVisionAssistant from https://www.ifm.com/us/en/product/OVP800?tab=documents.

Note

Updating the firmware from 0.16.xx to 1.0.xx is currently not possible with the ifmVisionAssistant.

In the instructions below, we expect that the user extracted the downloaded ZIP containing the firmware file.

Open the Vision Assistant and connect to the OVP8xx,
Navigate to the VPU Settings window and click Update under the Firmware Update section. The version beside the Update button refers to the current version running on VPU.
Select the file and the update process will start.
Once the update is complete, the device will reboot.

Note

The firmware update using the iVA Linux AppImage may fail on the first attempt, causing the VPU to remain in recovery mode. If this happens, refer to the instructions below to reboot to productive mode, using the ifm3d API.

With the ifm3d API

In the instructions below, replace <path/to/firmware_image.swu> with the path to the firmware file you downloaded from ifm.com.

$ ifm3d swupdate --file=<path/to/firmware_image.swu>

#include <ifm3d/device/o3r.h>
#include <ifm3d/swupdater/swupdater.h>
...
auto o3r = std::make_shared<ifm3d::O3R>();
auto sw = std::make_shared<ifm3d::SWUpdater>(o3r);
if (sw->FlashFirmware("<path/to/firmware_image.swu>")){
    sw->WaitForProductive();
    std::cout << "System ready!" << std::endl;
}

from ifm3dpy.swupdater import SWUpdater
from ifm3dpy.device import O3R
o3r = O3R()
sw = SWUpdater(o3r)
if sw.flash_firmware('<path/to/firmware_image.swu>'):
    sw.wait_for_productive()
    print("System ready!")

Note

The code snippets above do not show how to handle exceptions when they occur in the update process. Please refer to the API documentation for details on the potential exceptions thrown by each function.

Double check the firmware version after the update:

$ ifm3d dump | jq .device.swVersion.firmware

ifm3d::json config = dev->Get({"/device/swVersion/firmware"});

o3r.get(["/device/swVersion/firmware"])

Rebooting to productive mode

If you happen to be stuck in recovery mode, the device will not be “ping-able.” To reboot to productive, you have two options:

You can update the system again. If the update is successful, the system will reboot to productive, or,
You can use the ifm3d API to reboot to productive without updating. With the command line interface, you can use ifm3d swupdate -r. In Python you can use the reboot_to_productive function and in C++ the RebootToProductive function.

The full example script

We provide a full Python script to help you update the firmware using the API. You can find this script in the ifm3d-examples repository.