Zigbee OTA (Over-The-Air) firmware update support to Zigbee End Device component on the NRF52 platform? And try to make it expandable for future Zigbee OTA Upgrade Cluster support on ESP32 platform?

[Hedda]

Component name

zigbee

Link to component documentation on our website

https://esphome.io/components/zigbee/

Describe the enhancement

It it possible to add ability to support for native Zigbee OTA updates to the Zigbee End Device component on the NRF52 platform?

That is, implement full support for the Zigbee ZCL OTA Upgrade Cluster (Zigbee Cluster Library's OTA Upgrade Cluster) and ZigBee Over-the-Air Upgrade (OTAU) firmware updates that enable wireless ESPHome OTA updates via the Zigbee protocol and preserving Zigbee connections after OTA updates.

This feature should allow userrs to update ESPHome devices configured as Zigbee devices over-the-air using standard Zigbee OTA.

Zigbee firmware over-the-air (Zigbee FOTA) library provides Zigbee endpoint definition, which implements clusters responsible for transferring a firmware file through the Zigbee network.

• https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-2.1.3/page/nrf/libraries/zigbee/zigbee_fota.html

  • https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/nrf5_sdk_thread_zigbee/page/zigbee_example_ota_server.html

Having native Zigbee OTA support is for sure a wanted feature in the long term, even if it will take a long time to get there.

In my personal opinion this core concept here to add native support for building Zigbee End Device with ESPHome is to allow you to built native Zigbee End Devices using ESPHome firmware, and when end-user have deployed/commisioning them they should not have to use the ESPHome protocol to perform OTA updates on them but instead use standard Zigbee protocol via pure Zigbee communication and be seen to the Zigbee gateway as standard Zigbee device that fully follows the official ZCL (Zigbee Cluster Library) specification.

Use cases

Use case is to be able to allow to update OTA image via Zigbee gateway that the device is connected to, e.g. ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT:

• https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#ota-updates-of-zigbee-device-firmware

• https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/ota_updates.html

It is not user-friendly to if firmware updates of Zigbee devices require user to perform updates via Serial, Bluetooth or WiFi.

I imagine that if and when native Zigbee OTA support is added to ESPHome then it will create a new opportunity to make and sell finished Zigbee devices based on ESPHome that are not only meant for DIY enthusiasts but also for less advanced users who are just willing to buy an ESPHome device if it 100% works as a native Zigbee device, including supporting Zigbee OTA updates,

FYI; Apollo Automation (which is a commercial company that build devices using ESPHome and that also just last month was announced as the second official commercial partner to the Open Home Foundation) has several times expressed to their community that they want to be able to offer native Zigbee firmware for their devices as an option, so I would think it would be in their interest to make sure that some of their investments into ESPHome goes to adding Zigbee OTA support to it (i.e. they might be willing pay a developer to specificly work on that feature).

Anything else?

I believe that @tomaszduda23 has recently put the fundamental prerequisites in place to achive this on Zephyr based devices like nrf52?

• [nrf52,ota] zephyr mcumgr ota esphome-docs#5740

  • [nrf52, ota] ble and serial OTA based on mcumgr esphome#11932
  • [nrf52] allow to update OTA via cmd esphome#12344

• https://esphome.io/components/ota/

  • https://esphome.io/components/ota/zephyr_mcumgr/

So challenge might be more about how to build and package ESPHome firmware as native Zigbee OTAU file with correct metadata?

For reference; know that zigpy/zha project developers have some tools generating OTA index files and testing/checking them. Check out:

• https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy-cli

and

• https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy/wiki/OTA-Information-for-Manufacturers

I believe @luar123 mentioned before that he have no current plans to implement Zigbee OTA Update Cluster for the ESP32 platform as of yet.

• Zigbee support on the ESP32-H2, ESP32-C6 and ESP32-C5 #1397

Espressif's upstream ESP Zigbee SDK does however at least have support for Zigbee OTA Upgrade Cluster related APIs. See:

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-zigbee-sdk/en/latest/esp32/user-guide/zcl_ota_upgrade.html

and

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-zigbee-sdk/en/latest/esp32/api-reference/esp_zigbee_ota.html

Again, Bluetooth for OTA firmware updates should probably only be used as a workaround until there is native support for Zigbee OTA Update Cluster for both these platforms, but probably a good idea to add support for Bluetooth OTA firmware updates regardless, especially if it is simpler to add support for in ESPHome than native architecture for Zigbee OTAU Firmware (ZigBee Over-the-Air Upgrade) inside ESPHome, but I believe that sooner or later ESPHome will also need to have native support for building Zigbee firmware update images and allow pushing them over native Zigbee OTA (Over-The-Air) updates,