Difference between revisions of "What can I do with IGEP COM MODULE"
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Revision as of 16:07, 23 April 2012
| What can I do with IGEP0030 |
| If you have successfully completed the [[Getting started with IGEP COM MODULE|first chapter of this guide]], you can continue with this tutorial guide about IGEP COM MODULE. |
 IGEP COM MODULE
|
Booting and setting up
| Pre-installed software |
| By default, all brand new IGEP Processor Boards have a firmware installed on its flash memory.
That means that if you power up your board it will run a Linux distribution provided and installed by ISEE. |
This distribution consists on a minimal Linux-based distribution with a lite X Window System and GNOME Mobile based applications created with Poky Platform Builder.
In the previous chapter of this tutorial, we have booted IGEP COM MODULE with its pre-installed software.
Once the board has booted up, you can log in into IGEP0030 via many interfaces. In the previous chapter of this tutorial we have used the USB Ethernet Gadget and the Wifi interface, but you can use many other interfaces when connecting IGEP COM MODULE to an IGEP Expansion Board.
Boot priority
In fact, IGEP COM MODULE can boot from many other devices (listed by priority):
- from USB
- from UART3
- from a MMC/MicroSD card
- from OneNAND memory
As we haven't set any other boot device rather than the oneNAND (the IGEP0030 flash memory) the system boots from it.
But, as the MicroSD card has an upper priority than the flash, if you plug a MicroSD card (with the right configuration on it) to the MicroSD card reader, IGEP0030 will boot from it and won't boot from the flash memory.
Now, We are going to use this functionality to update your pre-installed software.
Updating the pre-installed software
| Requirements - Overview |
For this purpose, you will need:
|
| 1) Download the latest firmware into an external computer.
2) Uncompress the downloaded file. 3) Create a MicroSD card in your external computer. 4) Plug the MicroSD card to IGEP COM MODULE and boot from it. |
We are now going to update the pre-installed software to the latest version.
(if you are familiar with Linux, there might be some instructions and comments you can ignore, as they are for Linux newbies)
1) Downloading the latest firmware
The first thing you'll need to do is to download the latest firwmare from ISEE.
At your Linux host PC you should open Terminal and type the following command:
wget http://downloads.igep.es/binaries/firmware/poky-firmware-3.3.1-10.tar.gz
- Or download it from: http://www.isee.biz/component/zoo/item/igep-firmware
2) Uncompressing the downloaded file
Now you have downloaded a compressed file with the latest official firmware into the current directory (.tar.gz).
Next, we will use the application 'tar' to untar (uncompress) the donwloaded file. In the same Terminal session, type:
tar xzf poky-firmware-3.3.1-10.tar.gz
Next, you can go into the extracted directory with the system 'cd' instruction:
cd poky-firmware-3.3.1-10/
3) Create a MicroSD card
We are going to create the MicroSD card with the latest firmware. Before it, you have to know which 'device' is the MicroSD listed in the /dev/ directory, a directory where the detected devices are listed by the Linux system.
To know the device name, follow this instructions:
Insert your MicroSD card into the Linux host machine (the machine where you have downloaded the firmware).
In your Terminal session, run the following system command:
dmesg
This instruction will prompt all the system traces. If your MicroSD card has actually been detected by the system, the last lines of that prompt will correspond to the MicroSD card detection and mounting.
Check the MicroSD name and path, for example: /dev/sdb and remember it.
Now you can run the following script in the folder you have just extracted, and you will have to add some parameters. In your Terminal session, type:
./poky-media-create --mmc [device] --binary poky-image-sato-igep00x0-[timestamp].tar.gz --machine igep0030
where:
- [device] is the SD card device name, for example: /dev/sdb
- [timestamp] the parameter --binary is actually the name of another .tar.gz compressed file that you have already extracted in the previous steps. If you want to auto-complete the [timestamp] parameter, press TAB in the timestamp when writing the instruction and the system will write the name of the file automatically.
This instruction will last a few minutes. When the process ends, you will have a MicroSD card with the latest software on it.
4) Plug the MicroSD card
Therefore, you are ready to try it. Plug the MicroSD card into IGEP COM MODULE and power up your board.
Flashing the software image
Now your IGEP COM MODULE has the latest firmware running from MicroSD card.
But you might want to write the firmware to the flash memory, so you won't need the MicroSD card when booting the board. So let's do it.
Note: The following process is assuming that your host PC is connected to IGEP0020 via USB Ethernet Gadget or via Wifi. If not, read the previous chapter of this tutorial.
Enter to IGEP COM MODULE using:
* root as login name * an empty password
The software provided by ISEE has a script that flashes the content of your MicroSD Card to the flash memory in your IGEP COM MODULE.
You have to run this script, that is located at /opt/firmware directory. Open a Terminal and run:
cd /opt/firmware ./flash.sh
This will last a few minutes. When it is ready, unplug the SD card from IGEP COM MODULE and reboot the board:
reboot
Enjoy the new firmware running from flash memory.
Other references: update your pre-installed software image
Basic instructions
| Overview |
| Learn some Bash basic instructions in Linux (for newbies).
1) Create, edit, move and delete files 2) Run a simple script |
IGEP COM MODULE is compatible with many Linux distributions. In this tutorial we are using Poky Linux, which is the pre-installed software from ISEE.
In case you are not familiar with Bash instructions, here comes some basic instructions to help you startup with the board.
First of all, log in to IGEP COM MODULE with a console from your host PC (via serial port or via SSH), as shown previous sections in this article. Remember the default settings:
login: root password: (none: press return)
Once you are logged in IGEP COM MODULE, run the following commands:
cd / ls
You have moved to the root directory, that is "/". The instruction "ls" lists all the existing files and directories in the current "path".
Now let's go to the directory /home/root/ with:
cd /home/root/
You can always check at which directory you are with the instruction:
pwd
Most instructions include a 'help' option that can be accessed by inserting the parameter --help. Check out the help page of 'echo' instruction, for example:
echo --help
You can try the instruction by yourself and type:
echo Hello
You have sent the text "Hello" to the standard output, that is the console you are interacting with.
But you can change and 'redirect' the output by using the character '>' :
echo Hello world! > /home/root/name.file
Now notice you have redirected the output to a file called name.file :
ls
You can append any file using '>>' instead of '>'. You can print the content of the file to the standard output:
cat /home/root/name.file
Building a basic script
You can create a script that can run any instruction you want to use in Bash. The main advantage is that you do not have to compile the code, as is auto-interpereted by the system.
We are going to create a basic 'Hello World' script that is going to run the same command you have actually used before:
echo "echo > Hello world!" > /home/root/example.sh cat example.sh
Now you have created a file called example.sh, but by default it has no execute permissions (x):
ls -la
We are going to add permission to the file by:
chmod a+x example.sh ls -la
Now you can run the script:
./example.sh
You can edit this file (example.sh) with 'vi', the pre-installed text editor in IGEP COM MODULE.
vi example.sh
Press ESC and:
- :q! , to exit without saving
- :w , to save
- :wq , to quit and save
- i , to insert text
Other simple & useful instructions
- mkdir
- rmdir
- find
- grep
You can stop any instruction by pressing CTRL+C
Send a file between a PC and IGEP COM MODULE
In a Linux host PC, you can use SCP (secure copy) via SSH to transfer files between IGEP COM MODULE and your host PC.
We are going to use the default settings in IGEP COM MODULE for USB Ethernet Gadget and Wifi.
Note: This section is assuming you have successfully followed the previous chapters in this tutorial
Now let's transfer a file called original.file from your host PC to the directory /home/root/ in your IGEP COM MODULE.
In your Host PC open Terminal and type:
scp -r original.file root@<destination_IP>:/home/root/destination.file
where:
- destination_IP: 192.168.7.2 via USB Ethernet Gadget, 192.168.6.1 via Wifi
You can repeat the process from the IGEP COM MODULE console, and transfer a file from IGEP COM MODULE to your Host PC.
How to handle the gpio-LED's
| Overview |
| Using IGEP COM MODULE LED's with the associated platform device at /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/ |
IGEP COM MODULE has many devices that can be controlled using simple instructions.
In this tutorial, we are going to use the 4 LED's available in the board, which probably is the most simple feature in the board, but sometimes you may want LED's to be a way of checking the status of some of your applications.
You can easily turn LED's on and off using the 'echo' instruction.
Log into IGEP COM MODULE (via serial port or via SSH, as shown before), and run the following commands to turn LED's on:
echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d210\:green/brightness echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d210\:red/brightness echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d440\:green/brightness echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d440\:red/brightness
You can turn them down using the same command and write '0' instead of '1'. (Note: read known issues below)
If you want to trigger the leds you can enable this mode and select the trigger source (none by default) to: mmc0, mmc1, timer, heartbeat and default-on.
To enable any of this modes you just have to change a parameter in the directory of the led you want to control. You can see all the possibilities using 'cat':
$ cat /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d210\:green/trigger none mmc0 mmc1 timer heartbeat [default-on]
In the example above, we have checked the status of the trigger in led D240:green. Mode 'default-on' is selected.
To change it, for example, to the timer mode you can use 'echo':
echo timer > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d210\:green/trigger
In this case, we have set the trigger to the 'timer' mode. Now you can set the time for what the led is ON and the time it is OFF using:
echo 250 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d210\:green/delay_on echo 750 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d210\:green/delay_off
Now the selected led is configured with a timer consisting of 250 miliseconds ON and 750 miliseconds OFF.
Mount a MicroSD card
(Work in progress section!)
Access to Generic FAT32 microSD
mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0 /mnt/tmp/
Access to Generic USB Flash disk
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/tmp/
Safety Remove microSD
umount /mnt/tmp
Access to IGEP demo microSD
mount -t jffs2 /dev/mmcblk0 /mnt/tmp/
How to use wireless
How to use bluetooth
Known issues
- In the IGEP COM MODULE Revision E, the D440 Green LED does not turn off completely due to hardware configuration.
