Installing AREDN Firmware on a Mikrotik Device

hi welcome back to radio geek this is a quick little video on how to install the firmware initially onto your device that you may have purchased um without further ado we'll get right into it all right so the first thing you want to do is get your note out and if you have a dumb switch now this is a managed one but uh either one will work this one is defaulted right now so it's in the dumb if you will configuration meaning none of your vlans or anything like that are set up this just helps with some of your settings for some of the other software that we're going to use but if you don't have one you can do it without it it's just a little bit more finicky on the ethernet port side so first thing you want to do is get your switch powered up uh plug your computer into it via the ethernet um you'll see that here that's the red cable and then i have a small patch cord here to go between my dumb switch and then we're going to be flashing the micro tick hap here with the firmware and then power cord very important you want to start with this device off you do not want it on so what we can do is we can uh plug the patch cord in right into the hap and then on the hap since you got multiple ports we're gonna start in ethernet port one now it's very important that you follow the instructions step for step if you're following either mine or the ones right off the website because that can get you screwed up and we'll show you a little bit later on that we'll actually use some of the other ports but for the initial setup we're going to start on port one and do not apply power yet we've got to set a couple other things up first so after you've laid everything out the first thing you're going to want to do is go to the arden web page which i pulled up here and under software download go to the download big red tab here and then choose the firmware you need for your device now we're doing the microtech hap as you can see here ac light and so we're going to need both the factory and the system upgrade firmware you'll need this for micro ticks however if you're doing ubiquiti's or tp links you only need the factory uh firmware if you're doing the initial installation and then once you up if you want to upgrade and you already have arden firmware on your device you only need the system upgrade so we'll click those and download those before we go any further in addition to downloading the firmware we're also going to need to download tiny pxe server now there's two places you can get this i put a link down in the description below otherwise if you go to docs on the arden page and the latest and then go to installing arden firmware there are several links in here to the tiny pxe server program so once you have that downloaded and installed on your computer we will uh keep on trucking and change those ip addresses so the next step you're going to want to do is on your computer you're going to want to open up your ethernet adapter that you're using to connect to the node once you get to that adapter settings you want to click properties and then internet protocol version 4 and we're going to change it to using the following ip address instead of dhcp which it's set to right now and for this device it's going to be in the dot one so we're gonna use 192 168 one dot 50 and then subnet a 255-255-2550 and you can leave everything else blank um there are a few microtech devices that are in the 88 range so you'd use 192.168.88.50 or something to that nature so that's just something to be aware of most devices uh use the dot one uh subnet so we can set that hit okay you can leave the ethernet status up and then we'll go back to our device all right so once you've downloaded pxe server and the arden firmers located locate where you downloaded those arden firmwares to and you'll see i have them pulled up here and the one you want to be looking for is the arden 3.20.3.1 now that's the current firmware so if we're later you might see a different number there i as well as the er 71xx microtick vm linux um itran s i'm not even going to try to pronounce that but the the elf file for the microtic that you downloaded now right click on that and go to rename and then we're gonna just change it to rb now you're going to want to take that and copy it and then move it to your tiny pxe folder that you downloaded and unzipped and in there there's a files folder and i'll show you that here go to pre-exe serve files and then just paste it right in there we'll replace it and we're going to use and that's what we're going to reference when we upload it to upload it to the microtech and you'll see that here in a second so now that that's done we can switch back off and we'll open up the tiny pxc server alright so go ahead and go to your pxc server folder and open up the tiny pxe exe file now once you open it up this is what you'll see on your screen and there's a few things on here we'll want to make sure are set properly before we start the firmware upgrade the first thing under option you'll see your ip address make sure that this matches what you entered into your computer if it does not a couple things check this drop down and make sure that it's not it might be listed in there as well if you have more than one network card on your computer the other thing is go back to your ethernet settings and make sure that you saved and hit ok on your ip address and that it saved properly and then you'll have to close out a tiny pxc server and reopen it again to make sure that you get the right ip we'll want to make sure that bind ip stays checked and then down here at the bottom uncheck file name make sure that is unchecked usually it's checked and then click the f next to file name here we'll want to click this box to open up our rb file that we saved earlier so you see the open go to files then scroll down here it's uh right here rb.elf that's the file we saved and that's our factory firmware for the microtech so we'll open that and now you're ready to go so the first thing you want to do is you click online and then once we get everything started here you'll want to watch this window at the top here so let's go back to our microtic that we have currently powered off and what we're going to want to do all right we're gonna get my handy dandy reset device out here paper clip usually works just fine and we will set up the hap and you want to push the reset button and hold it until the power comes on and then what you want to do is you'll watch over on your tiny pxe server and it should pop up a little message there and we'll wait for it there you go it'll say that do read rbef and what that means is that the microtech board went out there and said hey do you have something for me and it said here you go here's a file for you and so it's going to start loading it now we'll let that sit and do its thing so on the tiny pxc server now that the we saw the do read all you got to do is click offline and if you want you can close out of it and we are done with the tiny pxe server for now all right so i'm back over here on my internet properties and we'll get that opened up and then all you got to do is obtain ip address automatically just check that checkbox hit ok ok now we're good to go now as we now that we have the microtech rebooted um before we're able to connect to it we're going to actually want to move your cable over to port 2 or 3 or four but it's got to be in one of these three ports in order for you to connect to it now um that isn't a very important step and if you missed that you might get a little find yourself a little frustrated after uploading that initial firmware and you'll be wondering why it's not talking and things like that so make sure you don't forget that step all right so we're back over here on our internet browser and we can connect to it um the best way is just to type in the address it should be 192.168.1.1 and there we go we have our uh node now very very important it is not done yet we are very close though so go to setup and the password is root or correction the username is root and the password is hsmm sign in and don't do anything else go right to the administration tab don't set your call sign don't do any of that because we are not done installing the firmware go to the administration and you'll want to choose file to upload firmware it's a two-step process we now we want to go and select the system upgrade firmware all right and then we will select the micro tick sys upgrade dot bin open and then upload and then just sit back and wait you can watch little flashy lights on your micro tick but it'll take a a couple minutes for this to be done and then we will finish our process so you'll see your microtech router board reboot a few times and that is perfectly normal and usually about a minute to two minutes and we should be done so we'll uh we'll just sit back here for a second all right so the note is rebooted twice now and we've typed back in we can just type in at that point localnode.local.mesh right here in the top and now you're ready to set everything up you have the firmware installed so you go to setup and again pat username is root and password is hsmm and initially what you're going to want to do is put your call sign and ssid in here so kc0 wkp-1 and then we're going to set our password save changes and it'll reboot and you're good to go now when it'll come back up it it once it's done rebooting it should refresh after 60 seconds and come back up to the dash page to the dashboard otherwise you can type in local.local localnode.local.mesh again or your ssid dot local.mesh and that will take it to it as well so that was a relatively quick way to install your firmware on your microtic uh nodes if you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments otherwise check us out on the arden facebook page otherwise uh my state uh wisconsin uh mesh facebook page as well as the arden website itself lots of good uh tutorials as well as the forums itself uh lots of good people on there that are willing to help out so have fun mesh on

Channel: Radio Geek

Views: 2,494

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

Keywords: AREDN, Mesh, Networking, Mikrotik, Radio, Ham, Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network, firmware, install, hsmm, setup, HAP, HAP AC, HAP Lite

Id: loCU6AkGDMg

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020