Communicating with domino core

Hi, I am working on the Domino pi and I am planning to use another domino core into my final prototype so I will integrate it in my pcb but I am not sure how I will install the image of openwrt that I am working on now to the core that will be placed onto the pcb.

You need to have at least one Ethernet on your board. So when there is a problem you can load the firmware to Domino via the Ethernet, using uboot.

But if your firmware runs good you can upgrade your firmware via wireless.

You need also the UART, which will save you if you have problems with the board.

I can’t implement ethernet port in my pcb but I can put three pins for UART, so if the core will come with default image that means when I will power it up it will act as access point so it will allow me to upload my image via wireless, but if there is something wrong with the image I will access the core using the uart interface and reinstall the image.
is that right ?

If you have a working image, you can upgrade using USB or wifi.

If you don’t have a working image, you can only upgrade using Ethernet.

So for production, we can assume that you are having a working image already, there is no need to have Ethernet. But for development, Ethernet is a basic requirement. Because you can easily broken your working image during development.

UART is used for interacting with the cpu but cannot be used to load firmware. So you cannot upload firmware to the board via UART.