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Some accelerated boards need their base operating system in place before they can run the AcuSight agent. This is a one-time, vendor-side step — get the board booted and on the network with the manufacturer’s image first, then connect it like any other device. Once a board boots to its vendor image and can reach the internet outbound, it meets the requirements and is ready to join your fleet.

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Synaptics Astra

Synaptics ships a ready-to-run OOBE (out-of-box experience) image for the Astra boards. It’s the only one that matters for AcuSight, because it comes with Docker and Docker Compose preinstalled — which is all the agent needs. Bring-up is two things: get a v2.0.0-or-later OOBE image onto the board, then confirm it’s reachable.

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Do you need to flash the board?

Power the board on, connect the keyboard and mouse USB to the board, attach the HDMI cable to your monitor. Once on, you can open the terminal and run this on the board:
  • v2.0.0 or later — you’re done. Skip to Verify the board is ready.
  • Anything older, or command not found — flash it, below.

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Flash the board

Flashing is Synaptics’ procedure, and their documentation covers it in full — you’ll need a host PC (Windows, macOS, or Linux) and a USB-C cable. 1. Download the OOBE image for your board. All Astra images live on the Synaptics Astra SDK releases page — go there for other boards or a newer release. Each board has a fetch script that downloads the image parts, joins them, and verifies the checksum: Run the script on your host PC and wait for SUCCESS: MD5 matched!, then unzip it. It unpacks to a directory called eMMCimg. 2. Flash it to the board. Follow Updating Astra Software in the Astra Yocto Linux User Guide. It covers both interfaces — over USB from a host PC, or over the network from the board’s U-Boot console with a TFTP server. Either works on the SL1680 and the SL2619.
That link is the current procedure, which matches the image above. If your board is on an older release and the instructions don’t match your hardware, pick your version from the dropdown in the left column footer of the Astra docs site — the v1.7.0 guide is a common starting point.
Synaptics’ own walkthrough covers console setup, first boot, and flashing (start at 3:15 in the video) on the SL1600 series, including the SL1680:
3. Boot on Ethernet. Let the new image come up, connect wired Ethernet, and note the board’s IP address. Wi-Fi works but introduces latency and reconnect issues during bring-up — use wired if you can.

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Verify the board is ready

Two checks on the board confirm it meets the agent requirements:
These are the same two things the setup script checks before it installs anything. If docker info fails on permissions, the daemon is fine but your user can’t reach it — run the setup command with sudo. If it reports command not found, the board isn’t on an OOBE image. With both passing, connect the board to AcuSight.

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If something goes wrong

  • MD5 mismatch on download — re-run the fetch script; it resumes rather than starting over.
  • The board won’t enter USB flashing mode — check that the SD_BOOT jumper is not attached, and that the USB-C cable is in the port next to the Ethernet jack rather than the other USB-C connector.
  • USB flashing fails on Windows — the host needs a USB driver; see the guide’s driver section. macOS and Linux don’t need one.
  • TFTP flashing can’t find the image — your TFTP server has to serve the parent of the image directory, and the board needs an address from DHCP before the transfer starts.
  • Newer images — the links above point at v2.4.0, current at the time of writing. Later releases use the same filenames with the release tag swapped.
  • Vendor demo software — demos for these boards install their own container stack and may move the Docker data root. Start from a clean OOBE image before installing the AcuSight agent.

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Next steps

Connect a device

Install the agent and bring the board online in AcuSight.

Supported devices

Requirements and the validated hardware platforms.