Aleph: instructions for making a first time SD card

Monome
1

I have just took in an Aleph, problem is the seller had omitted to include a SD card (though there is an SD card case holder, should is come with one?) and I am finding it a bit difficult making a SD card for first time use. I cannot seem to work out the documentation just yet wrt latest and or most stable code and so on, what format the SD card should be in (FAT I assume) as the website seems to be between worlds documentation-wise. Can someone please point me in the right direction for how to make a card so I can start to learn this box? I have a spare 64GB class 10 but that seems like overkill?

Typical noob stuff and apologies for such a basic thing but documentation seems a bit weird where this machine is concerned.

I assume I need latest versions of

The OS
Lines
Bees
Basic beginner Scenes: Dronescape, skitter and so on…

But there are no real docs on how to make a SD card.

1 Like
2

the most current instructions can be found on the update page. the brief version is:

  • format the sd card as MS-DOS making sure the volume name is ALEPH
  • download the latest release here (aleph-150718.zip is a full release even though only lines changed)
  • unzip the release and copy it onto the card, if you are on a Mac you can double click the copy.command file)

once you have the card setup; insert it, hold down the edit/play button (the square one above the encoders) while powering on the aleph. use the encoders to select aleph-bees-0.6.2.hex then press load. at this point you should see a checker board like progress indicator as the device is re-flashed. once complete the aleph will reboot and you should be good to go.

3

i should add that i personally use a 8GB sandisk ultra card (nothing fancy), i don’t know if there a upper limits on the size of the card… 8GB was actually the smallest one i could find at the time.

4

just to clarify that the filesystem type should be FAT32. can’t actually address more than 4GB of space, but yeah small cards are getting hard to find. it shouldn’t matter.

for linux the command i use is mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/whatever

5

Wonderful, works a treat and exactly as advertised thank you all. Does anyone know if USB hub sport will ever arrive for this as it seems very limiting to just have one USB controller support.