Exclude thingGroup from FreeRTOS OTA update

Question

Is it possible to exclude certain thingGroups from a FreeRTOS OTA update job?

As an example:
Say I have thingGroups: "production", "beta", and "internal".  Some things may belong to multiple groups.

I might want to roll out an update to the beta group first and then at some later time, deploy the update to all production devices.

When I go to make the job to deploy to the production group, can I exclude the beta group from this job?  I know that those things have already received the update, so I don't need them to go through the process of re-downloading the update and rejecting it because it's already on the device.

Greg_B · Answer

[Dynamic thing groups](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/dynamic-thing-groups.html.) are the right tool to manage this, and it's the kind of scenario the feature is designed for. You can have devices report their firmware version in a device shadow (or perhaps use the [package catalog feature and reserved shadow](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/preparing-to-use-software-package-catalog.html#reserved-named-shadow)). You can include the shadow in the [fleet indexing](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/iot-indexing.html) and then use the firmware version to create dynamic groups. For things, their group membership will automatically change as their firmware version changes, ensuring they are no longer targeted by jobs (OTA updates) once they have received the update.

So you could still have static thing groups for **beta** and **production**. Imagine all devices are currently running firmware 1.0, and this is reported in the **firmware** field of the classic (un-named shadow). You can create two dynamic groups ahead of performing your updates:

**beta-1.0**
```
thingGroupNames = beta and shadow.reported.firmware = 1.0
```

and

**production-1.0**
```
thingGroupNames = production and shadow.reported.firmware = 1.0
```

You create an OTA update targeting the **beta-1.0** group, upgrading the things in that group to 1.1. As each thing updates, it exits the **beta-1.0** group, but it ALSO exits the **production-1.0** group. Now you create an OTA update targeting the **production-1.0** group. This group will not include any devices that have already upgraded to 1.1.

This is just one way. Instead of static thing groups, you could use Thing attributes to denote beta and production devices. There are many possibilities.

cloudyy · Answer

Per my info unfortunately, FreeRTOS OTA currently doesn't provide a direct mechanism to exclude specific thing groups from an update job.

The primary reason for this is that OTA updates are typically designed to target a specific software version or a set of devices based on their firmware version. While you can filter devices based on these criteria, excluding devices based on custom tags or groups like "beta" or "production" is not directly supported.

While not ideal , a potential workaround you can consider:
1/ Assign unique firmware versions to devices in different thing groups.
 2/ Create OTA update jobs targeting specific firmware versions.
3/ This approach requires careful management of firmware versions and can become complex with frequent updates.

Exclude thingGroup from FreeRTOS OTA update

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