OTA updates for PoS Terminals

RTSoft has been tasked by major IT provider of automation systems for Retail industry to develop a solution for remote software updates (operating system and/or application) for a family of devices PoS terminals.

The solution should allow an automatic rollback in case of update failures such as connectivity problem or unexpected power loss, implement versioning and secure delivery mechanisms, and be customizable for future integrations.

Additionally, the solution should include a cloud back-end service for device and software repository, content delivery and rollout management.

The target devices’s characteristics are:

SoC: Mediatek MT7688
Flash memory: 64MB
Operating system: Linux (OpenWRT)

Key facts

Custom-built Linux kernel and OpenWRT image for A/B update mechanism
Modified U-Boot for A/B update mechanism
Custom implementation of Direct Device Integration (DDI) protocol for an edge device
Custom implementation of an Update Server as a cloud service

RTSoft provided its architecture and software development expertise on a system level. In the early stage of the project RTSoft collaborated with client's technical team to identify possible set of use cases and draft requirement for the solution that provide a best trade-off for the client. During a development phase RTSoft offered the solution's architecture and developed all software components some of which were based on open-source software.
On the client-side, RTSoft modified system software and developed update software components which provide:

update delivery mechanism
verification and installation mechanism
reporting.

On the server-side, RTSoft developed a "ready to be deployed as a Docker container" cloud service harnessing the open-source Eclipse hawkBit software.
The service provides the following functionality:

authorization mechanisms
software distributions repository update process monitoring
different batch rollout campaigns
administrative REST API
Web GUI and console tools.

Benefits

Cloud-based solution, fast deployment and scaling
Secure device access control system
Certificate-based access to artifacts repository
Rollouts monitoring system
Rollout tasks with load balancing
Scales to thousands of devices

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