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Put Tern on a board

This writes Tern 0.5.0-alpha.1 to one of 16 boards, from this page, with nothing to install. An ESP32 board is written over USB in about a minute; an nRF52840 board takes a file you copy onto it.

Fit the antenna first. The board sends by radio as soon as it starts, and sending with nothing on the antenna connector can damage it.
This is an alpha of a draft protocol. Its cryptography has not been reviewed: do not trust it with anything that matters. What it does and does not do.

Which board?

Checked on a board with this release.

Not yet checked on a board. The release builds for it, from its maker's pin map, but nobody has yet said it works. If you try it, say how it went, with what the checklist asks: that is how a board becomes one that is checked.

The page can tell which chip a board has, not which board it is: an image for another board with the same chip is written and does not work. Pick the board printed on yours.

Where will the board be used?

It sends on this region's frequency from the moment it starts, so the wrong one breaks the rules of the place you are in.

Australia AU915: 921.25 MHz, at most 30 dBm EIRPChile CL915: 921.25 MHz, at most 26 dBm EIRPEurope, the UK, Ukraine or South Africa EU868: 869.475 MHz, at most 10% of any hourKazakhstan KZ863: 864.375 MHz, at most 13 dBm EIRPMalaysia MY919: 920.25 MHz, at most 26 dBm EIRPNew Zealand NZ915: 921.25 MHzRussia RU868: 868.775 MHz, at most 10% of any hourThailand TH920: 921.25 MHz, at most 10% of any hour, at least 17 dBm EIRPUnited States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina or Peru US915: 921.25 MHz

Anywhere else: there is no image yet. Do not use one of these.

This browser cannot reach a USB serial port. Chrome and Edge on a computer can; Safari, Firefox and phones cannot yet. The release has the images, to write another way.

What is on the board now?Something else, or nothingreplaces it, Meshtastic or MeshCore and their settings included; the board gets a new Tern addressTern alreadykeeps its address, its sessions and its contactsupdate it this way once, and from then on the Tern phone apps can update it over Bluetooth

The browser asks which port: the board's is usually named for its USB chip, such as CP210x, CH340, CH9102 or USB JTAG/serial. If the app or a terminal has the port open, close that first.

Download the imageChoose a region first.
Plug the board in over USB and press its reset button twice, quickly. A drive appears, named for the board's bootloader.
Copy the .uf2 file onto the drive. The board writes it, restarts, and the drive goes. This replaces Meshtastic or MeshCore if either is on it; copied over Tern, it keeps the board's address, its sessions and its contacts.

These boards cannot be updated from a phone yet: copy the next release's file on the same way.

If the board would not go into its bootloader, hold its BOOT or PRG button, press and let go of RST, let go of the first, and try again. A cable that only charges does this too.

Open the app

What the flasher said

The images are the v0.5.0-alpha.1 release's, checked here against its SHA-256 checksums before a byte is written, and written with Espressif's esptool-js.

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Tern is an independent project, not affiliated with any other mesh project.