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Pluto+ Firmware Update

This post describes how I update my Pluto+ SDR transceiver:

Download the latest firmware from https://github.com/DeonMarais64/PlutoPlusSDR-FW/releases. At the time of writing this article this was version v0.37-dirty.

Preconditions / assumptions:

  • Filename: plutosdr-fw-v0.37-dirty.zip
  • IP of the Pluto+: 192.168.88.99
  • Local Windows user: abcd
  • Local OS: Windows 11

We can now either copy this file to the SD card of the Pluto+ or use a scp client to transfer the file via the network. This post describes how to perform the update via SCP.

We can now open CMD.exe and transfer the file via scp:

C:\temp>scp c:\users\micha\Downloads\plutosdr-fw-v0.37-dirty.zip [email protected]:/root/
[email protected]'s password:
plutosdr-fw-v0.37-dirty.zip                                                           100%   44MB  12.3MB/s   00:03

The Pluto’s default password for the user “root” is “analog”.

After the file has been transferred, SSH into the Pluto+:

C:\temp>ssh [email protected]
[email protected]'s password:
Welcome to:
______ _       _              _________________
| ___ \ |     | |         _  /  ___|  _  \ ___ \
| |_/ / |_   _| |_ ___  _| |_\ `--.| | | | |_/ /
|  __/| | | | | __/ _ \|_   _|`--. \ | | |    /
| |   | | |_| | || (_) | |_| /\__/ / |/ /| |\ \
\_|   |_|\__,_|\__\___/      \____/|___/ \_| \_|

v0.35-1-g714c-dirty
https://github.com/DeonMarais64/PlutoPlusSDR-FW
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Now unzip the firmware package:

# unzip plutosdr-fw-v0.37-dirty.zip
Archive:  plutosdr-fw-v0.37-dirty.zip
  inflating: pluto.dfu
  inflating: uboot-env.dfu
  inflating: pluto.frm
  inflating: boot.dfu
  inflating: boot.frm
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The firmware update process can now be started as following:

# update_frm.sh ./pluto.frm
356+1 records in
356+1 records out
Done
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Please be patient, the update might take a while. After the update has been done, we now reboot the Pluto+:

# reboot

After waiting a bit for the system to restart, we can now SSH into the Pluto+ again to confirm the successful update:

C:\temp>ssh [email protected]
[email protected]'s password:
Welcome to:
______ _       _              _________________
| ___ \ |     | |         _  /  ___|  _  \ ___ \
| |_/ / |_   _| |_ ___  _| |_\ `--.| | | | |_/ /
|  __/| | | | | __/ _ \|_   _|`--. \ | | |    /
| |   | | |_| | || (_) | |_| /\__/ / |/ /| |\ \
\_|   |_|\__,_|\__\___/      \____/|___/ \_| \_|

v0.37-dirty
https://github.com/DeonMarais64/PlutoPlusSDR-FW
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