Why is it beneficial for me?
Firmware Factory is offering wiligear.com customers a new way to create and develop their products by using this still fresh online mechanism. The main function is to provide a tool that would help to avoid time-consuming in-house firmware development. Using the Firmware Factory, customers will be to have already pre-configured devices with particular network settings instead of configuring them manually and change the web interface visually and functionally. The base of WILIGEAR product’s software platform (WILI-S) has a very wide feature list, but there is no such scenario where all of them could be used at once, so this is why we offer building customized firmware, which consists of a SKIN file and a configuration file.
What is a SKIN?
SKIN concept is a new approach of adding a graphical user interface for devices based on WILIGEAR CPU boards. It allows having both visually and functionally different web user interfaces on WILIGEAR platforms. Such approach is different from a GUI as it enables change of the look and extension of functionality of the device. WILIGEAR customers can have a few SKINS uploaded on their device and easily switch between them. WILIGEAR customers can upload their skins with the configuration file on an online firmware factory and have their own firmware images built.
Is it hard to create your own SKIN?
Everyone, who has a knowledge of HTML, PHP and CSS will be able to create new or modify the existing graphical user interface. SKINs allow changing fonts, colors, images and overall design of a graphical user interface and this can help you to enter the market quickly with your own branded product. To help our customers create their own SKINS, we have released API documentation. SKINs are an open source code released under BSD copyright.
Our own SKINS
WILIGEAR software developers have created access point, customer premises equipment, point-to-point and mesh skins. Those skins make devices work in different scenarios and facilitate configuration process. Despite that it is quite easy to modify and cahnge SKINS, we are always advising our custmers to use the existing skins and rebrand them instead of creating new ones from the very beginning.
How to use the Firmware Factory?
Every registered user will be able to use the new mechanism and it is really easy as 1,2,3.
- 1 Go to an online Firmware Factory on http://www.wiligear.com;
- 2 Choose type of the firmware you want to build (install image or update) and upload your configuration file and skin that you created for a product/ device;
- 3 Press ‘build‘ and wait for your firmware image.