Revision as of 17:54, 5 March 2012

IGEP0020

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Getting started

What can I do

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Overview

If you have successfully completed the first chapter of this guide, you can continue with this tutorial guide about IGEP0020.

What can I do with IGEP0020

1) Booting up IGEP0020
2) Updating the pre-installed software
3) Flashing the latest firmware to the IGEP0020 flash memory
4) Connect to IGEP0020 from network interfaces
5)
) Installing other distributions to IGEP0020

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 IGEP0020 with its pre-installed software.

Once the board has booted up, it asks for a login in the serial debug port. You can log in into IGEP0020 via the serial interface.

*The default login user is: root 
*There is no password for this user.

Boot priority

In fact, IGEP0020 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 device rather than the oneNAND (the IGEP0020 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, IGEP0020 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 IGEP0020 pre-installed software

Requirements - Overview

For this purpose, you will need:

a microSD card
a computer with microSD card reader (or with adapter)
a GNU/Linux distribution installed on the computer (a Linux partition or a virtual machine on Windows)
- the main reason is that Windows does not detect multiple partitions on a microSD card

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 IGEP0020 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

2) Uncompressing the downloaded file

Now you have donwloaded 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 igep0020

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 IGEP0020 and power up your board.

Flashing the software image

Now your IGEP0020 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 the Serial Debug port. If not, read the Serial Port instructions in the previous chapter of this tutorial.

Enter to IGEP0020 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 IGEP0020.

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 IGEP0020 and reboot the board:

reboot

Enjoy the new firmware running from flash memory.

Other references: update your pre-installed software image

Connect to IGEP0020 via Network interfaces

Overview

1) Plug an ethernet cable to IGEP0020

2) Connect via ethernet network, SSH: root@192.168.x.x

3) Connect via wireless network, SSH: IGEP_WLAN at root@192.168.x.x

You can log into IGEP0020 via many interfaces with network connectivity, such ethernet, wifi, usb-ethernet gadget, etc.

In this tutorial we are going to connect via an ethernet cable. To to that, you need to set an IP in IGEP0020 and start a SSH session in your host PC. Let's do it.

First of all, you will need:

an Ethernet cable
a Linux or a Windows host PC

Log into IGEP0020 via the serial cable to the serial debug port in IGEP0020, as you have done in the previous chapter of this tutorial guide.

Once you are logged in, run the following command:

ifconfig

This will list all the enabled network interfaces in your IGEP0020.

We are going to focus on 'eth0'. This is the ethernet interface in your IGEP0020, which is the interface we want to connect to from our host PC.

Now, let's set an IP to this interface in IGEP0020, for example: 192.168.6.2

Type the following command in your serial console:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.6.1

Next, set an IP within the subnet in your host PC, for example: 192.168.6.3

Then, run a SSH client such Putty and connect to the target

Read this article, where there is a complete explanation about how to login via Ethernet.

How to handle the gpio-LED's

This is probably the most simple feature in the board, but sometimes LED's may be the only way of checking the status of some of your applications.

IGEP0020 has 4 LED's which you can control, for example, using 'echo'. Here is an example of turning LED's On:

echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d240\:green/brightness
echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d240\: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'.

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/d240\: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 'none' is selected.

To change it, for example, to the timer mode you can use 'echo':

echo timer > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d240\: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/d240\:green/delay_on
echo 750 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/d240\:green/delay_off

Now the selected led is configured with a timer consisting of 250 miliseconds ON and 750 miliseconds OFF.

How to use RS-485

Follow the link to the extensive article: How to use RS-485 on IGEP0020 board

How to get sound out (audio out)

The amplifiers for the headset output are disabled by default, so the first thing you'll do is enable these amplifiers with

amixer set -D hw:0 'Headset' 0dB
amixer set -D hw:0 'HeadsetL Mixer AudioL2' on
amixer set -D hw:0 'HeadsetR Mixer AudioR2' on

Then you can easily play a wav sound, for example

aplay sample.wav

How to get sound in (audio in)

You can record audio in with

arecord -t wav -c 2 -r 44100 -f S16_LE -v audio-in.wav

Following output is expected on console

Recording WAVE 'audio-in.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
Plug PCM: Hardware PCM card 0 'TWL4030' device 0 subdevice 0
Its setup is:
stream       : CAPTURE
access       : RW_INTERLEAVED
format       : S16_LE
subformat    : STD
channels     : 2
rate         : 44100
exact rate   : 44100 (44100/1)
msbits       : 16
buffer_size  : 32768
period_size  : 2048
period_time  : 46439
tick_time    : 7812
tstamp_mode  : NONE
period_step  : 1
sleep_min    : 0
avail_min    : 2048
xfer_align   : 2048
start_threshold  : 1
stop_threshold   : 32768
silence_threshold: 0
silence_size : 0
boundary     : 1073741824

When ever you think you want to stop just press CONTRL+C

Linux distributions

In this tutorial, we are going to use the pre-installed software in your IGEP0020, that is the Poky Linux.

But if you wish, you can always update with a new or a different distribution.

If you are familiar with Linux Kernel and distributions, you can check out the Software distributions category at the IGEP Community Wiki to get many other distributions for your IGEP0020.

Otherwise, we are now going to introduce the main components of the preinstalled software of your IGEP0020:

Bootloaders:
Kernel:
Root File System:
Kernel Modules:

Developing under IGEP Technology

Visit the following link and start developing under IGEP Technology

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