Troubleshooting

Unable to access airlink.local

Usually AIRLink dashboard is available at airlink.local/ address, however, this is browser and router dependent and not all routers support the technology needed for this (local DNS). If your router does not support the Local DNS technology, then you can find the assigned address on the settings page of your router and access AIRLink with the IP address (this is usually 192.168.1.X).

To identify the IP address you will need to go to your router dashboard, login and find the connected devices list. Usually, it looks as follows:

In our case we found our that the IP address of the AIRLink in the home / office network is 192.168.0.19

Therefore, if we go to 192.168.0.19 in the web browser we will see the same welcome page.

AIRLink is not accessible over Wi-Fi

1. Connect the ethernet JST connector cable to the AIRLink port labelled ETHERNET (The same cable that is used for connecting AIRLink Telemetry system air unit)

2. Attach the Sky-Drones ethernet adapter to the other end of JST ethernet cable.

RJ45 dongle connected to AIRLink's ethernet port

3. Plug in ethernet cable into the Sky-Drones ethernet adapter and connect the other end to your network router, power up AIRLink unit.

NOTE: This must be a regular ethernet cable and not a 'crossover' cable.

Ethernet cable connected from router to the AIRLink's RJ45 dongle

4. On a PC connected to the network: open the browser and go to: airlink.local or the IP address assigned to the AIRLink's ethernet port by your router. You may need to login to the router to check the IP address of connected devices or use a network scanning program such as nmap or mobile app such as Fing to find the wired IP address of the AIRLink unit.

5. Click WiFi Settings button in Menu and take care to enter the correct SSID and passphrase.

6. Click Apply button and your airlink will connect over WIFI. (if you are accessing the AIRLink interface via IP address and not the airlink.local address, keep in mind the wireless IP address will be different from the ethernet adapter address so be sure to confirm the new address using methods described in step 4. You can now disconnect the Sky-Drones ethernet adapter.

7. On a PC connected to the same network, open the browser and enter the address airlink.local or the IP address of the AIRLink's wireless connection.

Mission computer firmware recovery

Get the firmware

Contact Sky-Drones Technologies using this contact form to get the firmware.

Prepare microSD card

You will need an empty micro SD card with at least 32GB capacity to flash the firmware image onto it.

Download and install the flashing tool

Download Balena Etcher software, this will help to prepare the bootable SD card and flash an image onto it. After the download is completed, install the software and open it.

Flash the image onto SD card

• Select an image file you have just downloaded

• Select the Target (your 32 GB SD card)

Make sure that you have selected the correct target which corresponds to the microSD card. Selecting the wrong target will result in the target being overwritten and lost data.

• Click Flash!

The process will take approximately 20 minutes. Make sure to safely unmount SD card before unplugging it from the card reader.

Flash image in AIRLink

1. Insert the SD card into CPU SD card slot

2. Connect the main Power supply to the AIRLink, the system is powered on.

Firmware upgrade process will be started and will include the following key milestones:

1. In approximately 5 minutes, the blue CAM LED will light up. This means that the start of the firmware upgrade process has been successfully initiated.

2. In approximately 15-20 minutes CAM LED will start flashing slowly. This means that the firmware process has been completed and the verification stage is in progress.

3. In approximately 2-5 minutes after the start of CAM LED flashing, the AIRLink will turn itself off automatically. This means that the firmware upgrade process has been successfully completed.

CAM LED Status light (Blue)

After that, you need to turn off the power and remove the microSD card. On the next power up the AIRLink will boot in standard operating mode.

WARNING: DO NOT DISCONNECT THE POWER SUPPLY OF AIRLINK DURING THE UPGRADE PROCESS

Don't forget to remove the microSD card from the slot. Otherwise, the firmware update process will be started again on the next power up.

Autopilot bootloader update

In some cases you might need to update the autopilot bootloader to get it to the latest version or to recover the unit.

Download Bootloader file

First of all, you would need to download the bootloader file and save it on your computer. You can get the most recent bootloader file with the link below:

10KB

smartap_airlink_bootloader.bin

Copy bootloader file on a microSD card of the autopilot

Take the microSD card from your autopilot, plug it into your computer and copy smartap_airlink_bootloader.bin into the foot folder. After that, plug in the microSD card back into the AIRLink FMU microSD card slot.

Run update procedure

Connect SmartAP AIRLink to your computer using FMU USB port and open Terminal in QGC.

Locate the microsd card folder:

cd fs/microsd

List the files to make sure that there is a required bootloader file:

ls

You would see the following output:

Run bootloader update procedure:

bl_update smartap_airlink_bl.bin

You should expect the following output:

Autopilot bootloader update has been successfully completed.