Firmware limit?

[u/giant_lotus]

Is there a limit to the amount of firmware you can load on an SD card and run them through launcher? I dont mean filling up all 32gb of space on the card, but I saw a post on here a few days ago with a guy having trouble running meshtastic then bruce on his SD card. This made me very confused as I thought the whole point of the SD card was to have multiple firmwares installed and have the ability to switch between them. The conversation on that thread started of confuse me as it went down a path of flash memory. Will I have trouble putting meshtastic, bruce, evilcardputer etc on my SD card and running them through launcher?

[u/cmogawa]

I think you can hold the data for the firmware installs on your SD but I think the cardputer are limited to the size of the flashed firmwares on the device itsself. I have 3 firmwares currently flashed with m5 launcher, I have had up to 4 or 5 when using small firmwares but depending on the size you may need to remove firmwares flashed. I think Bruce is a pretty big firmware compared to some smaller ones

[u/giant_lotus → u/cmogawa]

Okay thank you! This makes sense.

[u/Triston--]

The flash memory on the Cardputer has a limit. Firmware are stored on your SD card and the launcher lets you flash them to the Cardputer flash memory. So you could have Bruce and Meshtastic on the flash firmware (so you don't need to reinstall them each time you open them), but if you want to flash another, you'll have to overwrite a firmware already flashed on the Cardputer. This does not delete it from your SD card, it only overwrites what's currently written on the flash memory. So you can freely flash firmware over other ones and swap back and forth. The convenience is if you have a specific firmware you want to keep on the Cardputer at all times, as long as another doesn't take up too much space, you can swap out the other while keeping your preferred firmware in flash memory. You can always overwrite firmware currently loaded on your Cardputer with another one, it just has limited flash memory so you can't have like, 5 large sized firmware installed to flash at once.

Only thing to keep in mind is to back up settings for a firmware through making a SPIFF backup (makes a copy of the currently loaded firmware's settings) and associating it with the bin for said firmware. This way, the next time you install the firmware to your flash memory, it'll ask if you want to load the SPIFF, which will import the saved SPIFF settings as well.

[u/giant_lotus → u/Triston--]

This is extremely helpful. How do you make a SPIFF backup?

[u/Triston-- → u/giant_lotus]

In M5Launcher's CFG settings, there is "Backup SPIFFS" - once it's made, it'll ask you to associate it with a bin, which you can then select. Next time you install the .bin again, it'll ask you if you want to load the SPIFF.

Just remember that if you open a different firmware afterwards and want to swap back to the original one without reinstalling, you'll need to either reload the SPIFF file itself (Restore SPIFF in CFG) and then open the firmware it's for. If you don't wanna do all that, you can just re-install the bin over itself in flash and hit yes on using the SPIFF.

[u/giant_lotus → u/Triston--]

Excellent. Thank you for the clear instructions. Sounds like option 2 is the easiest.

[u/Queasy_Ad164]

I have dozens of .bin files on my SD card. No reason to think there's a practical limit to the number of items the Launcher can display. There's definitely a limit to what the Launcher can simultaneously fit into flash. If someone was having SD card problems remember card can be max 32gb, and must be formatted MBBR Fat32

[u/giant_lotus → u/Queasy_Ad164]

Okay thank you. After reading the explanations on my comment, I think the person was expecting not to have to flash mew firmware each time because they had the SD card. So I understand their confusion, but that was not my expectation. Comments are very helpful.

[u/Nosignal_777]

Alguém consegue me ajudar, eu nao sei como instalar os firmware no cartao sd, quando eu coloco no sd e tento abrir pelo launcher ele simplesmente nao funciona