After you have attached to the board the support devices, as specified in the previous article
and built the image
Lede Image for Linkit 7688 Duo
we upload the image to the device.
Following the documentation availble at the link
Update the firmware with a USB drive
to update the firmware copy the lede-ramips-mt7688-LinkIt7688-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin file to the root directory of a FAT32 USB drive and rename it as lks7688.img.
Attach, now, the USB drive to the HOST port of the board with an OTG cable and follow the steps
- Press and hold the on-board WiFi button.
- Press the MPU reset button once, while holding the WiFi button.
- Keep holding the WiFi button for about 5 seconds. Do not release until the orange LED for WiFi is off. DO NOT press the WiFi button longer than 20s or it will upgrade the bootloader.
- The device will automatically reboot after firmware update is complete.
You can control the operation via the USB TTL serial connected to the PC and activated on the enabled Com port with the following settings
- Port: Enabled COM
- Speed: 57600
- Data Bits: 8
- Stop Bits: 1
- Parity: None
- Flow Control: XON/XOFF
Use, for example, putty to connect, press Enter if the screen is not active, and to check the steps the system is runnig when upgrading
When the orange LED starts blinking at a lower frequency the card is ready to be used
On the Lede system, the wireless card is disabled by default, while Lan is operational, but only accessible via a Breakout board
To enable the wireless card connect with putty (screen on Linux) to the previously connected USB TTL serial and go to the /etc/config folder; edit the network file and add at the end the following section
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config interface 'wlan' option proto 'dhcp' |
Save and run
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uci commit network |
Edit the wireless file and add at the end the section
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config wifi-iface 'sta_radio0' option device 'radio0' option mode 'sta' option ssid 'Access Point' option key 'password' option encryption 'psk2' option network 'wlan' |
where Access Point and password indicate the Access Point name and password; the wireless security setting is wpa2.
Save and run
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uci set wireless.radio0.disabled=0; uci commit wireless; |
Enable the wireless, running
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wifi |
Access the Lede interface with the address assigned by the Access Point
Set the password and access to the Lede management.
In this firmware, the leds on the board are not synchronized with wireless operations, unlike from OpenWrt firmware with the Mediatek proprietary interface and drivers.
In the next article, we will give some examples of interfacing with the arduino IDE, based on the tutorial on the Mediatek site using this custom Lede image