What can I do with IGEP COM MODULE

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What can I do with IGEP0030
If you have successfully completed the first chapter of this guide, you can continue with this tutorial guide about IGEP COM MODULE.


IGEP COM MODULE.png
IGEP COM MODULE

  • IGEP COM MODULE guides:
  1. [[Getting started with IGEP COM MODULE|Getting started]]
  2. [[What can I do with IGEP COM MODULE|What can I do with IGEP COM MODULE]]
  3. Start developing


Overview
Igep0030.jpg
1) Booting up IGEP0030
2) Updating the pre-installed software
3) Flashing the latest firmware to the IGEP0020 flash memory
4) Connect to IGEP0030 via network interfaces
5) Basic instructions
6) Send a file between a PC and IGEP0030
7) Handle IGEP0020 LED's
8) Mount a MicroSD card


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):

  1. from USB
  2. from UART3
  3. from a MMC/MicroSD card
  4. 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:
  • 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 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

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.


Continue with this tutorial at: Start developing under IGEP Technology