ZeroTrace AirLeak Pro
Hardware Overview
A tour of the board, connectors, switches, buttons and LEDs
Everything on the AirLeak Pro board you can touch, plug in, or read at a glance. For the deeper dives, see Power & Battery, Antennas, GPS and Storage.
The two-processor design
AirLeak Pro carries two radio processors on one board, and it behaves as one device:
- The main processor, handles 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE, plus the microSD card, the status LED, the battery system, the GPS header (for the optional GPS add-on), and the link to your phone. It's the brain that pulls everything together and produces the log.
- The Wi-Fi co-processor, a dedicated dual-band chip that adds 5 GHz Wi-Fi coverage. It scans and hands its results to the main processor over a private internal link.
To you, it's invisible, one device, one app connection. The split is simply what lets the Pro watch both Wi-Fi bands at once. For the full reasoning, see Why Two Processors.
Connectors
| Connector | Use |
|---|---|
| USB-C | Charges the battery and carries data for firmware updates / console. |
| 18650 holder | Holds the single 18650 cell, observe + / − polarity. |
| microSD slot | Removable log storage, with card-detect so the unit knows a card is present. |
| Debug pads | Spring-pad programming/recovery header, one per processor. See Programming. |
| Antenna connectors | External antennas for the Wi-Fi/BLE radios. See Antennas. |
| GPS header | Takes an optional GPS module for standalone wardriving. See GPS. |
Switches
The board has two slide switches, they do different jobs, don't confuse them.
Power switch
Selects whether the board runs from the battery or from USB. For normal field use, run from the battery. The cell charges from USB-C regardless of this switch, charging is independent of whether the board is "on".
USB-data switch
Chooses which processor the USB-C data lines connect to, so you can update one chip at a time: all switches down = the Wi-Fi co-processor (C5), all switches up = the main processor (S3). The single USB-C port only talks to one at a time. This only matters for firmware updates, it has no effect on charging or scanning. If the dashboard reports the wrong chip, flip the switch.
Buttons
| Button | Function |
|---|---|
| BOOT | Holds the selected processor in firmware-download mode (recovery flashing). Does nothing in normal use. |
| RESET | Resets the selected processor. |
In everyday use you don't need either button, they exist for development and recovery.
LEDs
The board has three LEDs in two groups.
Charge LEDs
Driven directly by the charger, so they're always accurate:
| LED | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Red | Battery charging |
| Green | Charge complete, or standby / no cell |
Status LED
A single addressable RGB LED driven by the firmware. It shows power-on, activity, link status and alerts, and it dims automatically as the battery runs low. Colours follow the installed firmware; broadly:
| State | Typical meaning |
|---|---|
| Breathing blue | Advertising / waiting for the app |
| Steady blue / cyan | App connected, capturing |
| Green | Radios linked and healthy |
| Amber | Radios establishing their link |
| Yellow / flashing red | A privacy or threat alert fired |
The status LED and the red/green charge LEDs are separate. The charge LEDs are about the battery; the RGB LED is about what the firmware is doing.
Mechanical
The board has four Ø2.2 mm mounting holes for fitting it into an enclosure or onto a mount. It is bare electronics, handle it by the edges, keep it dry, and use an enclosure for outdoor or in-vehicle use. See Safety & Care.