Updating edgertronic software

Background

Each time the camera powers on the camera checks to see if an update (.tar) file exists in the root directory of the SD card. If so, the camera goes through the update process, rebooting several times and operating as normal using the new software. The camera automatically deletes the update file from the SD card. The software update process takes around seven minutes, so be patient. While the system LED is blinking white, the update is in progress.

Getting updated software

The Software releases web page contains the latest released software. You can download the software update image from there.

Update procedure

• Insert a big SD card in your computer.
• Browse to the Software releases web page and right mouse click on the Camera update file link.
• Using the Save link as option, download and save the camera update (.tar) file directly to the SD card.
• After the download completes, tell your computer to eject (unmount) the SD card.
• Wait another 10 or 20 seconds to make sure the processor in the SD card has time to finish committing the file data to NAND.
• Remove the SD card from your computer.
• Power off the camera.
• Insert the big SD card containing the update (.tar) file into SD card slot on the back of the camera.
• Power on the camera. Within 30 seconds, you should see the System LED blink white. The entire update process will take around seven minutes. System status LED turns blue and Camera status LED turns green in color at the end of the software update. You can monitor the update progress by watching the camera's LEDs.

Important: While the update is in progress, don't disconnect power to the camera or software corruption can occur and you will need to unbrick the camera.

• The update process deletes the update file from the SD card once a successful update has occurred.

Failed update

If you see the system LED blinking red, it means the update failed. The failed update is caused by the camera update (.tar) file being corrupt. The most common ways for the update file to get corrupted are:

• You removed the SD card before everything had a chance to get finished writing to the flash memory in the SD card. Even after you unmount and the computer says it is safe to remove the SD card, wait another 10 seconds.
• You removed the SD card without unmounting the SD card first.
• The filename got corrupt because you already had a file with the same name in the download directory so you computer nicely renamed the file for you.
• Very distant 4rd possibility - your SD card is bad and needs to be replaced

Not necessary to do, but you can get more details on what went wrong during the update by browsing to the camera (http://10.11.12.13).

To recover from a failed update, delete the update file from the big SD card, save the update file to the big SD card again, unmount the SD card, wait 10 seconds, put the SD card in your camera and reboot the camera.

Note: when the system LED is blinking red, that means the camera detected a corrupt update file before any changes were made to your camera. You can simply delete the update file off the SD card and continue to use your camera with the what ever version of software was currently installed.

Using your camera after an update

• Quick Start Guide to get the Edgertronic WebUI

When the update is complete, you can browse to the camera and you will see the Figure 1: Usage Agreement followed by Figure 2: Release Summary.

Figure 1: Usage Agreement Screen Shot

Figure 2: Release Summary

Replacing the micro SD card

The micro SD card can be removed using another micro SD card (or a pencil or paperclip). If you replace the micro SD card, buy the most reliable card you can. We only use Single Level Cell (SLC) or Pseudo Single Level Cell (pSLC) technology 4GB industrial grade cards. 2GB card should work, but haven't tested it recently. We use less than 1 GB of the space on the microSD card.

We only ship new cameras with industrial grade cards:

• Delkin Devices, which has cards on Digikey. We specifically recommend the 4GB Delkin industrial grade card.

• Swissbit S-46u or S-52u series which has cards on Amazon and Digikey

Update recovery

If your camera loses power during the update, the camera may not boot properly. You can directly reprogram the micro SD card to recover.

Windows 7 Additional Step

When using Windows 7, you may get a warning from your computer about the .tar file. The file will not finish being downloaded until you click on "keep" on the drop down menu as seen below.

Micro SD card usage technical details

Results of checking the partition table on a camera using an 8GB cheap micro SD card.

374-v2_5_3rc30 ~ # echo -e "p\nq" | fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Command (m for help): 
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 8010 MB, 8010072064 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 973 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1   *           2           6       40162+  c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2               7          46      321300  83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p3   *          47          49       24097+  c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

In the fdisk output, the Start and End values are in cylinders, where the cylinder size is around 7.8 Mbytes or exactly (255 * 63 * 512) / (1024 * 1024).

Checking how much of the allocated space is used by each of the three partitions:

374-v2_5_3rc30 ~ # df -h /dev/mmcblk0p1 /dev/mmcblk0p2 /dev/mmcblk0p3
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mmcblk0p1           38.6M      3.9M     34.7M  10% /mnt/boot
/dev/root               303.8M    289.2M         0 100% /
/dev/mmcblk0p3           22.8M      3.3M     18.3M  15% /mnt/rw

At the moment the minimum size for a micro SD card is 38.6 + 303.8 + 22.8 = 365.2MB or a 512 MB card. We have never tested with less than a 4GB micro SD card.