Remote Firmware Upgrades for Embedded Series¶

The standard firmware upgrade procedure concludes with a hard power cycle of the AIR-T. By following the steps below, it is possible modify the AIR-T's hardware configuration so that firmware upgrades no longer require a power cycle.

1. If your AIR-T is in an enclosure, you will need to remove the top cover for access to the J21 and J29 headers.

   • Remove the rubber feet and screws on the bottom of the enclosure.

     

   • Slide the external housing off from the AIR-T's enclosure

2. Connect a jumper wire from header J21 pin 31 to header J29 pin 1.

   J21 header with pin 31 marked:

   

   J29 header with pin 1 marked:

   

3. Now, instead of power cycling after loading the FPGA's flash memory with a new image, you may use the fpga_reload command that was introduced in AirStack v0.4.1. This command will reconfigure the FPGA from flash memory without requiring a reboot by safely taking the FPGA off the PCIe bus, reloading the flash memory into the FPGA, then placing the FPGA back on the PCIe bus with the new image.

$ fpga_reload