Manually update firmware - Airtame 1 – Knowledge Center

Key Facts

Manually flashing the SD card can only be done for Airtame 1.
You will need a Micro SD card reader.
You don't need to format the Micro SD card.
You will need additional software to manually flash firmware (instructions below).

Note that Airtame 1 devices will stop receiving firmware updates after December 31st, 2020. The Airtame 1 devices will continue to work with the Airtame desktop app and Airtame Cloud until at least 2022.

Micro SD Card requirements

You can re-use the SD card already in Airtame. Should the SD card be corrupt then please follow the instructions a the bottom of this article.

Size: recommended is 8 GBs. Can work with 4 GB cards.
Speed Class: At least Class 4 (C4) or greater
Bus interface: UHS Class 1

How to manually flash the SD card

Airtame can be manually updated by taking the SD card out of the device and plugging it into your computer using a Micro SD card reader. Here's how to so:

Using Windows

Download the newest firmware image.
Use 7zip to extract the “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.tar.gz” file first. Do this by first installing 7-zip, then right-click on the “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.tar.gz” and select Extract Here.
Then use 7-zip again to extract the “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.tar” file, to get a .img file, which should be the final file installed on the microSD card.
Using your Micro SD card reader plug the SD card into your computer, a window will pop up, and click the "Cancel" button.

*There is no need to format the current SD card, just ignore this warning*

5. Then download balenaEtcher, which will be the program used to flash the Micro SD Card. Open the Etcher installer and run the installer.

6. Once the program is installed, open the program called balenaEtcher.

7. You will see this window popup, click on “Select Image”.

8. Navigate to the file location where you downloaded the file “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.tar.gz” and extracted its contents. Open the out folder, and select the “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.img” file.

9. By default if you do not have any other microSD cards plugged into your computer/laptop it will automatically select the microSD card for the Airtame 1 device.

10. Click on “Flash!” to flash the SD Card. You will be prompted to enter your username and password.

11. You will see the progress of the flash on the right-hand side.

12. When the flash is done you will see this screen:

Using macOS

Download the newest firmware image.
Double click on the file “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.tar.gz”, it will be extracted by using MacOS’s built in unarchiver called “The Unarchiver”. Double click again on the “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.tar” file, to extract a .img file, which should be the final file installed on the microSD card.
Using your Micro SD card reader plug the SD card into your computer, a window will pop up, click the "Ignore" button.

*There is no need to format the current SD card, just ignore this warning*

4. Then download balenaEtcher, which will be the program used to flash the microSD Card. Double click on the icon named balenaEtcher.

5. A window will pop up, click on open, to open the application.

6. You will see this window popup, click on “Select Image”.

7. Navigate to the file location where you downloaded the file “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.tar.gz” and extracted its contents. Open the out folder, and select the “airtame-fw-vX.X.X.img” file.

8. By default if you do not have any other removable media plugged into your computer/laptop it will automatically select the microSD card for the Airtame 1 device.

9. Click on “Flash!” to flash the SD Card. You will be prompted to enter your user credentials.

10. You will see the progress of the flash on the right side.

11. When the flash is done you will see this screen:

In case of a corrupted microSD card

The most time-efficient way would be to obtain a new microSD card. Here are microSD card requirements:

Size: At least 8 GBs or larger
Speed Class: At least Class 4 (C4) or greater
Bus interface: UHS Class 1

Please note that the new microSD card would still have to be flashed to make sure that it has firmware for the device to run on.

If you come across any problems with the above process or a corrupted SD Card please send your request to support@airtame.com

End of life

Airtame 1 devices will stop receiving firmware updates after December 31st, 2020. The Airtame 1 devices will continue to work with the Airtame desktop app and Airtame Cloud until 2022. Starting in 2023 we no longer test our Airtame App or Airtame Cloud with Airtame 1 and while we don't do anything actively to prevent the use of Airtame 1, there won't be any patches if/when the App or Cloud stops working with the Airtame 1 device.