maali
Bring a controller back to life

Put Maali on a fresh board, from your browser.

If a controller board ever gives out, you do not wait on us for a replacement. Buy the same board off the shelf, plug it into this computer, and this page writes Maali onto it. No software to install, no cable but the one in the box.

firmware 0.2.1 · ESP32-S3 · ~1.5 MB
This browser can't talk to the board. Flashing needs Chrome or Edge on a laptop or desktop (they carry the connection this uses; Safari and Firefox do not, and phones can't do it at all). Open this page in Chrome or Edge and the button above will come to life.
Two things to get right

It must be the same board. Maali is fitted to the Waveshare ESP32-S3-RS485-CAN (external-antenna version) — the exact one on the parts list. A different ESP32 board has its wires in different places and will not work. If in doubt, order the board from the parts list.

This is a clean slate. A fresh flash gives you a brand-new Maali with no yard, no network, and no password — exactly like the day you first built one. When it restarts it puts up its own setup network (look for maali-XXXXXX); join it, open http://192.168.4.1, and walk the setup again. If you can still reach the old controller, download a settings backup first (its Settings page, under The controller) — then restore it on the new board and you are done in a minute instead of rebuilding the yard by hand.

How it goes

  1. Get the board. The same Waveshare ESP32-S3-RS485-CAN from the parts list. New out of the packet is fine.
  2. Plug it into this computer with a USB-C cable — the same port you would use to charge a phone.
  3. Press the button above and, when the little window asks, choose the board from the list of ports.
  4. Wait about a minute. It erases, writes, and checks itself. Do not unplug it while it works.
  5. Fit it back in the cabinet and walk the setup, or restore your backup. The garden is watered again.

Nothing here leaves your computer except the one download of the firmware itself. The writing happens locally, over the cable, between this page and the board. Prefer the command line? The same image is published as maali-factory.bin with each release, flashable with esptool at offset 0x0.