What can I do with IGEP0020

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IGEP0020
  • What can I do




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


Preinstalled 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.


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:


Booting and setting up

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.


In fact, IGEP0020 can boot from many other devices (listed by priority):

  1. from USB
  2. from UART3
  3. from a MMC/MicroSD card
  4. 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 your pre-installed software

We are now going to update the pre-installed software to the latest version.

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

(if you are familiar with Linux, there might be some instructions and comments you can ignore, as they are for Linux newbies)

At your Linux host PC you should open Terminal.

The first thing you'll need to do is to download the latest firwmare from ISEE: 

wget http://downloads.igep.es/binaries/firmware/poky-firmware-3.3.1-10.tar.gz

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: 

tar xzf poky-firmware-3.3.1-10.tar.gz

Next, you can enter into the extracted directory with the system 'cd' instruction: 

cd poky-firmware-3.3.1-10/


We are going to create the MicroSD card with the latest firmware. Before it, we have to know which 'device' is the MicroSD listed in the /dev/ directory, a place where the detected devices are listed by the system.

To know the device name, insert your MicroSD card into the host machine (the machine where you have downloaded the firmware).

Now run the following system command: 

dmesg

This instruction will prompt all the system traces. The last lines will be the ones corresponding to the MicroSD card detection and mounting.

Check the MicroSD name and path, for example: /dev/sdb

Now you can run the following script in the folder you have just extracted, and you will have to add some parameters: 


./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.


Therefore, you are ready to try it. Plug the SD card into IGEP0020 and power up your board.


Flashing the software image

Now you have a booted board with latest firmware running from MicroSD card, you can write the firmware to the flash memory.

(serial port reminder)

Enter to IGEP0020 using root as login name and an empty password, enter to the /opt/firmware an run the ./flash script 

cd /opt/firmware
./flash.sh

When finish, unplug the SD card and reboot the board, enjoy the new firmware running from flash memory.

Other references: update your pre-installed software image


  • Serial Console: here is an explanation about how to correctly configure your Serial Console
  • SSH: here is an explanation about how to login via Ethernet or USB


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


Developing under IGEP Technology

Visit the following link and start developing under IGEP Technology

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