Intel Edison Flashing Firmware on OS X - Wired

Get access to the new Intel® IoT Developer Kit, a complete hardware and software solution that allows developers to create exciting new solutions with the Intel® Galileo and Intel® Edison boards. Visit the Intel® Developer Zone for IoT.

Overview

The firmware on your Intel® Edison board is the operating system, and also allows for use of Wi-Fi*, Bluetooth*, analog and digital controls, and other functions. It's important to keep it up to date to ensure the best stability and performance of your board.

Requirements

Attach the Intel® Edison module to your board, see Assemble your Intel® Edison board.

Step 1 – Connecting
Step 2 – Remove old images
Step 3 – Download the latest image
Step 4 – Flashing

Step 1 – Connecting Edison

1. If you haven't already,Make sure the micro switch in between the USB ports on the Arduino board is switched towards the micro USB ports (1 in Figure 1). Connect two micro USB cables into the Arduino board, and the other ends into your computer (2&3 in Figure 1).

2. You should see a drive called "Edison" show up in Finder.

Step 2 – Remove old images

1. Open up a new Terminal window.

2. Type cd /Volumes and press Enter.

3. Type rm –rf Edison/* and press Enter. This removes all visible files and folders.

4. Type rm –rf Edison/\.* and press Enter. This removes all hidden files and folders. If you get an error "rm: "." and ".." may not be removed" it's ok. ("." and ".." are special links to current dir and parent dir and may not be removed)

5. All files should now be removed. To confirm, type ls -lag Edison to view files on the drive and press Enter.

6. Press Enter. The next line after you press Enter should be blank.

Step 3 – Download the latest image

1. Right-click the Edison partition and check if it is formatted as FAT16. (Macs do not flash FAT16 partitions properly.) If the partition is not FAT16, skip the next step; otherwise continue.

   

2. Open Disk Utility, click CD Gadget Media drive, and repartition it as one MS-DOS (FAT) partition. This changes the partition to FAT32 format.

   

Note: Getting "Partition Failed Couldn’t unmount disk" ?

Unfortunately, if you leave a terminal window open while attempting to partition your Edison, you will see this error. The solution is simple: Close the terminal before trying to partition the disk!

3. Download the latest image .zip file - choose from the Edison Yocto complete image.

4. Unzip the contents and move these files into the Edison drive that is shown in step 1.2.

5. Your Edison drive should now look like this.

Step 4 – Flashing Edison

1. Open up a new Terminal window.

2. Type screen /dev/cu.usbserial and press Tab on your keyboard.

   

   

3. Type 115200 -L.

   

4. Press Enter.

5. A black screen displays, press Enter twice.

   

6. Type root and press Enter.

7. If you already configured your Edison then you might be prompted for a password, type the appropriate credentials and press Enter.

   

8. Type reboot ota and press Enter (Warning: this erases everything on your Edison including configuration settings).

9. Your Edison reboots and begins the flashing process with the latest image.

   

10. When Edison is done flashing, you should see this screen.

    

Because you have just flashed the image on Edison, any previous configuration settings (name, password, WiFi networks) need to be configured again.

Alternate Flashing Method

1. Install Homebrew by running the command:

   type/run: ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

2. Install dfu-util, coreutils, and gnu-getopt

   type/run: brew install dfu-util coreutils gnu-getopt

3. Download and extract Edison Image (Step 1 and 2 need to be done only once on the MAC OS X host).

   1. Extract the contents of the pre-built Edison image.

   2. In your terminal change to the directory where you extracted the linux image. Example: your directory may be different.

      type/run: cd ~/Downloads/edison-image-ww36-14

4. Run the flashall script and then plug usb cable into board.

   type/run: ./flashall.sh

5. Note: The script can take up to 5 minutes to complete the flashing.

You should now have the latest image on your Intel® Edison development board.

Operating System:

Mac OSX*

Intel® Developer Zone for IoT

Start inventing today with the Intel® IoT Developer Program which offers knowledge, tools, kits and a community of experts to quickly and easily turn your innovative ideas into IoT Solutions.

Dream it, Build it with the Intel® IoT Developer Kit for Intel® Edison and Intel® Galileo platforms. These kits are versatile, performance-optimized and fully integrated end-to-end IoT solutions supporting a variety of programming environments, tools, security, cloud connectivity and hardware.

For more resources and to learn how the new Intel® IoT Developer Kit v1.0 can help streamline your IoT projects:

• Download the Intel® IoT Developer Kit
• Visit the Intel® Developer Zone for IoT
• Attend one of our Roadshows for hands-on training in creating your own IoT projects