Upgrade your radio - my.sbitx.net

Upgrade your radio to zbitxre

For a zBitx or an sBitx v3. Your settings and logbook come across, and the old software is kept: you can go back to it.

Before you start

The radio is switched on, not transmitting, and connected to your Wi-Fi, with the internet. Steps 2 and 3 check this.
Allow about 20 minutes on a zBitx, less on an sBitx. Do not switch the radio off while it runs.

1. Open a terminal on the radio

On the radio's screen, with a keyboard and mouse, open the Terminal from the menu.

2. Check the radio is on the internet

In the terminal type:

ping -c 3 my.sbitx.net

You should see three lines with bytes from. If it says unknown host, unreachable or nothing for a while, the radio is not on the internet: connect it to your Wi-Fi first.

3. Check the radio's date

Click the clock at the top right of the radio's screen. Does it show today's date?

Yes: go on to step 4.
No, only then: type this line, then click the clock again:
sudo date -u -s "2026-10-20 00:03"

4. Type the whole line

In the terminal, type this whole line, exactly as it is, then press Enter:

curl -fsSL https://my.sbitx.net/install.sh | bash

Check it letter by letter before you press Enter. The address alone does nothing: it must be the whole line.

All small letters, except a capital S and a capital L in -fsSL.
A space after curl, after -fsSL, and on each side of |.
| is the upright bar, usually Shift and the backslash key; not a capital I or a small l.
my.sbitx.net: s-b-i-t-x, with a dot on each side.

If you are reading this page on the radio itself, press Copy and paste it into the terminal instead of typing it.

5. Answer its questions

It says what it will do and asks before it changes anything. It builds the new software, which takes most of the time, then asks to restart the radio. At the end it offers to put the radio on my.sbitx.net.

6. Only if the terminal says the front panel needs the USB cable

The steps below are needed only this one time. Future updates of zbitxre will update the front panel automatically.

Download front_panel.uf2 on your computer.
Switch the radio off.
If a cable is plugged into the micro-USB port marked CAT, unplug it. Plugged in, it keeps the panel powered, and the panel does not restart.
Hold the tuning knob pressed in, and while holding it, switch the radio on. Then let go of the knob.
With a USB cable, connect the micro-USB port marked CAT (not the one marked USB) to your computer. A drive called RPI-RP2 appears.
Copy front_panel.uf2 onto that drive. The drive goes away by itself and the panel restarts.
Unplug the cable, switch the radio off, and switch it back on.

Afterwards

To use the radio from your phone or computer, add it here.
Later updates: on the radio, SET, then Update.
To go back to the old software, type ~/zbitxre/setup/undo_install.sh in the radio's terminal and restart it.

Accounts for sBitx and zBitx owners.