Copy Loco roster to another throttle.

[Budman1758]

I am in the process of building a couple more of these and was wondering what the easiest way to replicate the loco roster to another unit would be.

[alex-code]

Currently you'd have to remove the MicroSD card to copy it to another.
I need to look into the possibility of zip files on the ESP32, creating and unzipping so you can export and import.

[Alan-Lomax]

Attached in an abbreviated roster showing the format of the native roster file.
More info can be found here: https://www.jmri.org/help/en/html/apps/DecoderPro/RosterFile.shtml

Sample_JMRI_roster.zip

[Alan-Lomax]

Looking further ... it appears there is a built in (into JMRI) python script to export the roster to CSV RosterCsvExport.py
I have not explored this option but if correct that would be the heavy lifting part of the 'export' done.
Then a matter of conditioning the data (throw most away - keep the bits needed for the throttle) and then coming up with a good way of dropping that info into the throttle database.

[Alan-Lomax]

During a zoom meeting today .. and quite by coincidence .. I saw a good example of using OTA. At the root of the talk was this RNT article: https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-ota-over-the-air-vs-code/
The implementation is only a few lines of code (which initially must be included and uploaded in the conventional manner.) Thereafter pointing a web browser to the ESP and providing login credentials allows you to upload a bin file (your latest code that has been compiled to file). In a few seconds the new code was in and running. It all looked very slick. Apparently the same process can be used to upload other files and so is potentially an opportunity to send to the throttle a file which is the 'roster'. The throttle program changes would involve checking for, reading and parsing such a file)

[alex-code]

I'm going to try the browser based upload first as it's a bit more plug'n'play.
I think for OTA you need half the available flash for a new upload to and I'm not sure how much free space there is.

[daveclifford]

Alex -

I agree completely re: space available for buffering.

Working at IBM, we discovered that automagic updates were cost prohibitive due to the need for 2x+ memory
(and memory was very expensive $100+) , so the solution was to replace eproms - still expensive!

Your solution is elegant and the additional code to add to provide the upload cabability should be trivial.

Installing/using the VS Code and PlatformIO IDE to build/upload the code deters a lot of model train hobbyists from building the T3 WiFi Throttle.

My 3 cents,

Dave

[Budman1758]

Is it possible to just expose the SD card as a drive like it is when plugged into your PC? Plug the cable in just as you do when uploading the code and shows up as a drive. Then you can copy config and any other files back and forth. Don't know if this is possible or not.

Transferring files would probably happen quite a bit more often that code updates I would think. Also during code updates that doesn't really affect the base file system that is uploaded separately from the code when uploading the initial code.

Food for thought.

[alex-code]

Unfortunately not, when plugged in I can only communicate via Serial so would need a desktop app too.

I'm nearly done with some download/upload options.
Each loco/function set can be downloaded individually or you can download all configs.
These can then be individually or bulk uploaded.

Just doing testing as too many requests can overwhelm the ESP32 and cause it to crash.

[alex-code]

I've updated the repo with the new download/upload options.
You only need to update the filesystem with this one (after downloading the changes).
https://github.com/DCC-EX/EX-T3-WiFi/blob/master/docs/code.md#uploading-the-code

You may need to CTRL+F5 or Shift+F5 in your browser so it downloads the throttle website changes.