Connecting to Centipede is pretty easy. There are several ways of doing this. My personal recommendation is:
Serial port is available on Centipede pins 28 - RX and 29 - TX, pin out is compatible with standard FTDI serial to USB converter cable TTL-232R-3V3.
Pretty straight forward. Run program, enter COM port number, select baudrate 115200 and click "connect".
picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0
Putty can be used for SSH, Telnet and Serial connectivity. It's a Swiss knife tool for Windows. Usage is as simple as in serial mode. Run, enter IP address, select protocol and connect.
SSH is not enabled by default. In order to enable enter on your Centipede:
passwd
Then enter password and repeat. After this Centipede can be connected:
ssh root@192.168.1.1
Where root
is your default root user and 192.168.1.1 IP address.
This option is enabled in fresh OpenWrt. Connecting to Centipede is straightforward.
telnet 192.168.1.1
Where 192.168.1.1 is your Centipede's IP address.
This procedure must be performed on your computer. We use Xubuntu and Ubuntu but many other distributions should work. It is also possible to build on OSX. Building on Windows platform is not recommended.
In order to build OpenWrt, you will need few software packages on your computer. Some are mandatory, some optional.
sudo apt-get install subversion g++ ncurses-term zlib1g-dev gawk flex patch openssh-server minicom picocom tftp tftpd gettext libncurses5 libncurses5-dev unzip quilt git git-doc git-gui libxml-parser-perl
Get latest sources from 8devices OpenWrt branch.
git clone https://github.com/8devices/carambola2 carambola2 cd carambola2
If you are building firmware for the first time just run:
./build.sh
This will update package feeds and build minimal image firmware image. If you want to customize your build look for more details in advanced section.
Note that building OpenWrt firmware takes some time. On moderate computer it might take 1 to 3 hours. CPU load during this process is usual close to 100%. You should see build log like this:
If you feel like something is missing or looking for some goodies, this section is for you.
This section covers few methods how to upgrade firmware on Centipede. Some methods require only USB-Serial connection, some only LAN, some LAN and Serial. Also you might need to install/setup other software to perform these tasks.
This method is recommended for novices. Connect to Centipede web interface, browse for firmware upgrade (System → Backup / Flash firmware), select file and press upgrade.
Login to Carambola and download binary image to RAM. (Alter IP and path to match your binary image location)
scp test@192.168.1.105:/home/test/carambola2/bin/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-carambola2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin /tmp
Perform upgrade procedure.
sysupgrade -v -n /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-carambola2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
Or if you wish to save configuration files:
etc/ethers etc/config/wireless etc/config/system etc/config/network etc/config/dropbear etc/config/firewall etc/config/dhcp etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key etc/dropbear/dropbear_dss_host_key
type:
sysupgrade -v -c /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-carambola2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
Centipede comes preloaded with 'Caraboot' boot-loader, you can use USB recovery functionality to perform upgrade. NOTE: using this method will destroy any configuration changes you made. You have the new boot-loader if U-Boot version looks like this:
===================================== Caraboot v2.0 (AR9331) U-boot http://www.8devices.com/ ------------------------------------- DRAM: 64 MB Flash: 16 MB
To perform recovery, you need USB flash drive formatted with FAT32 file system. Copy Carambola sysupgrade image to root directory of the flash drive and rename the file to '8dev_recovery.bin'. Plug USB drive to Carambola's USB port, press device reset button (marked S2), while holding reset-to-defaults button (next to USB port, marked S1). Hold reset-to-default (S1) button until WIFI LED on development board flashes 4 times. This means boot-loader found recovery image, and will flash it immediately. After flashing finished, LED will blink 2 times and device will reboot. If boot-loader can't find recovery image in USB media, it will try booting OpenWRT normally.
If you have serial console connected, process should look like this: