Flash Nanopi M4 V2

Hi All, here is a quick howto for flashing a Nanopi M4 V2

I did this using a Linux box and a USB TTL serial cable)

1) Download an image from https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-m4-v2/

2) Start a terminal

3) cd to the folder containing your download

4) Unzip your download to extract the *.img file

5) Connect an sdcard or eMMC to your pc ( I used a transcend adapter )

6) Run lsblk to identify your device, in my case it returned /dev/sdc

7) Run mount to ensure it is not mounted and unmount it if necessary ( umount /dev/sdc or umount /dev/sdc1 )

8) Run dd if =NameOfYourImage.img of=/dev/sdc status=progress

9) When completed ( it takes a while ) make a directory to enable you to mount your device ( mkdir /mnt/MyDevice)

10) Run mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/MyDevice

11) nano /mnt/MyDevice/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

12) Add these two lines and save the file

[device]
 wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

13) Unmount the device (umount /mnt/MyDevice)

14) Put the device( sdcard or eMMC ) in the M4 - DO NOT APPLY POWER YET !

15) Connect a serial cable to the UART pins on the board and attach the other end to a USB port on your PC

16) Issue this command picocom -b 1500000 /dev/ttyUSB0 ( I'm typing this at work but I think this is correct ) this should connect you to the M4

17) Apply power to the M4 and you should see the boot output

18) Login as root with password 1234 ( you'll be prompted to change the password )

19) Run armbian-config to configure wifi

20) Ensure you have an ip address ( ip a ) and look for wlan0

21) Reboot the M4 having removed the serial cable first.

In my case It all worked - your case may be different.