Friday 11 May 2018

Flashing/Upgrading the eMMC of Beaglebone Black (2018)

I am looking for instructions on how to upgrade my BeagleBone Black. Most of the instructions on the web are outdated and doesn't work. Here are the steps I did to upgrade my BBB:

  1. Download the image from https://beagleboard.org/latest-images
  2. Extract using 7-zip and you should be able to have a file with .img extension.
  3. Write using Win32DiskImager.
  4. As of this writing, there are additional step that needs to be done to enable the eMMC flasher on the image. You need to modify the uEnv.txt
    1.  If you have Windows machine, use VirtualBox and load your favorite Linux distro (LUbuntu on my case)
    2. Follow these steps extracted from Beagleboard.org:  To turn these images into eMMC flasher images, edit the /boot/uEnv.txt file on the Linux partition on the microSD card and remove the '#' on the line with 'cmdline=init=/opt/scripts/tools/eMMC/init-eMMC-flasher-v3.sh'. Enabling this will cause booting the microSD card to flash the eMMC. Images are no longer provided here for this to avoid people accidentally overwriting their eMMC flash.
  5. Make sure that your BBB is turned off.
  6. Plug in the SD card.
  7. Press and Hold S2 button. (Don't let go!)
  8. Plug in the power. 
  9. Wait for the User LED to flash then about 4 to 5 seconds, release S2 button
  10. Wait for around 10 to 20 seconds for the User LEDs to do "running LED lights". This is the signal that BBB is flashing.
  11. Wait for user LEDs to turn off, this is the signal that BBB is finished flashing.
  12. It will turn off at the end.
  13. Remove power
  14. Remove SD card.
  15. Reapply power. 
  16. Enjoy