sbc-groundstations

A unified OpenIPC ground station image builder using Buildroot 2.

Supported GS Hardware

• RunCam Wifilink
• Emax Wyvern-Link
• Radxa Zero3 (choose one of the above)
• OpenIPC Bonnet

Flashing

Easy Flash eMMC via SD Card (Windows), upgrading from older SBC Images

This method flashes the full image to eMMC by booting from an SD card — supports old sbc versions, no drivers, no special tools required.

What you need:

• An SD card (any size, FAT32 formatted)
• <platform>_sdcard.img from the releases
• <platform>_boot.scr from the same release

Steps:

1. Format the SD card as FAT32.

   • Open Disk Management (Win + X → Disk Management), right-click the SD card partition → Format → FAT32.

2. Copy the files to the SD card.

   • Copy <platform>_sdcard.img to the root of the SD card.
   • Copy <platform>_boot.scr to the root of the SD card and rename it to boot.scr.

3. Boot from the SD card.

   • Insert the SD card into the device and power it on.
   • U-Boot will automatically detect and run boot.scr, which loads the image and writes it to eMMC.
   • The process takes a few minutes. When complete, the device removes boot.scr and the image file from the SD card and reboots into the freshly flashed system.

Note: The device must have a working U-Boot on eMMC. If the eMMC is completely blank or U-Boot is corrupted, use RKDevTool instead — see Bootloader Only — via Maskrom (RKDevTool / rkdeveloptool).

Boards without eMMC flash

Just use etcher to flash the <platform>_sdcard.img to an SD card.

Advanced flashing methods

Full eMMC Flash via dd (from SD booted system)

Boot from an SD card and write the eMMC image:

dd if=/tmp/<vrx name>_sdcard.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 status=progress

Note: This will erase all data on the internal flash.

Bootloader Only — via dd (from running system)

Update only the bootloader on the eMMC without touching the rest of the flash:

dd if=/tmp/<vrx name>_u-boot.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 seek=64 status=progress

Useful when upgrading from SBC-GS Beta 2 or older, which do not support squashfs-based systems. Also useful when you want to keep existing data on the eMMC.

Bootloader Only — via Maskrom (RKDevTool / rkdeveloptool)

Flash <vrx name>_emmc_bootloader.img to the eMMC using RKDevTool or rkdeveloptool.

See: How to recover RunCam VRX from a bad flash

Note: This will erase all data on the internal flash.

Upgrade

Once flashed, the Buildroot image can update itself via several ways:

• Copy the <vrx name>.tar.gz package to a FAT-formatted SD card and reboot.
• Copy the <vrx name>.tar.gz package to the DVR partition on the SD card and reboot.
• Copy the <vrx name>.tar.gz package to the DVR partition on the eMMC. Use scp, SMB, or gadget mode and reboot.
• Use sysupgrade -u -r for an online update. See sysupgrade --help for more options.
• Use ./build.sh ssh-flash to flash a local build to BR2_BOARD_HOST. See menuconfig.
• Use ./build.sh flash to flash a local build to the eMMC using rkdeveloptool (maskrom).

Boot Menu / Debug Boot

Hold the Up button while powering on (keep it pressed until the splash appears) to open a small boot menu on the HDMI screen:

• Normal boot — the default quiet boot (same as not entering the menu).
• Verbose boot — debug boot: boots without quiet, with loglevel=8 and the kernel console mirrored to the HDMI screen (console=tty0) in addition to the serial console. The splash is skipped so the kernel log stays visible.

Navigate with Up/Down, confirm with Right. The selection applies to the current boot only.

On boards without buttons (or over serial), the same debug boot can be started from the U-Boot prompt:

setenv pxe_label_override verbose
boot

Factory Reset

• Hold the Right button during boot.
• Run firstboot.

Gadget Mode

• Hold the Left button during boot to enable USB OTG gadget mode.

  Via the OTG port, you will get:

  • DVR access
  • Serial connection
  • Network connection (SBC is on 192.168.5.1)

Custom Build (Linux/WSL2)

Custom builds rely on Buildroot dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/OpenIPC/sbc-groundstations.git
cd sbc-groundstations
./build.sh

Refer to Buildroot’s documentation for instructions on customizing your build: Buildroot

Dual Boot (Older RadxaOS based images)

There is a DTB naming mismatch in u-boot versions between the sbc-gs and older RadxaOS based images e.g. Ruby. The fix is to copy the correct DTB into the Ruby partition once after installing:

# Boot to sbc-gs and enter these commands:
mkdir -p /mnt/ruby
mount /dev/mmcblk1p3 /mnt/ruby
cp /boot/rockchip/rk3566-radxa-zero-3w-aic8800ds2.dtb /mnt/ruby/usr/lib/linux-image-5.10.160-34-rk356x/rockchip/rk3566-radxa-zero-3w.dtb
reboot

CC Edition Maintained by @zhouruixi

See the CC branch

• Radxa zero 3W/E v0.9-beta