This guide provides you with the tools and know-how to install and develop software using the Linux Board Support Package (BSP) for the phyCORE-AM65x Development Kit.

This guide shows you how to do everything from installing the appropriate tools to building and deploying custom kernels. Please refer to the phyCORE-AM65x Hardware Manual for specific information on board-level features such as jumper configuration, memory mapping and pin layout for the phyCORE-AM65x System on Module (SOM) and carrier board. Additionally, gain access to the SOM and carrier board schematics for the phyCORE-AM65x Development Kit by registering at the PHYTEC Schematic Registration portal.

Requirements

The following system requirements are necessary to successfully complete this guide. Deviations from these requirements may suffice, or may have other workarounds.

Software

  • A modern GNU/Linux Operating host system either natively or via a virtual machine:

    • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS recommended, 64-bit required. Other distributions will likely work, please note that some setup information as well as OS-specific commands and paths may differ.

    • If using a virtual machine, VMWare Workstation, VMWare Player, and VirtualBox are all viable solutions.

  • Root access to your Linux Host PC. Some commands in the Quickstart will not work if you don’t have sudo access (ex. package installation, formatting SD cards).

  • At least 220GB free on target build partition and at least 8GB of RAM available to the build host.

  • SD card reader operational under Linux.

    • If you do not have SD card access under Linux then formatting, copying the bootloader, and mounting the root file system on an SD card will not be possible.

  • Active Internet connection

Hardware

  • phyCORE-AM65x System on Module (PCM-067)
  • phyCORE-AM65x Carrier Board (PCM-941)
  • USB 2.0 A to USB 2.0 Micro B cable
  • SD Card (8GB or more recommended for flashing and development)

  • AC adapter supplying 12VDC / min. 2A

Connector Interfaces

Use the following as a reference for the connector interfaces on the phyCORE-AM65x Development Kit that will be used in this Quickstart.

Getting Started With Binary Images

This section is designed to get the board up-and-running with pre-built images.

Booting the Pre-built Images

The section was designed to show you how to boot the phyCORE-AM65x Development Kit with the pre-built demo images. Before starting the following steps, please Create a Bootable SD Card with the release images from PHYTEC's Artifactory, then configure the board to boot from SD/MMC with the help of the Boot Configuration how-to guide. If needed, you can flash your image to eMMC by following the Flashing Images to eMMC how-to guide.

If you need help with how to connect the board to your host PC check out the QuickStart

  1. Connect the kit supplied USB cable from your PC to the X16 micro-USB connector on the carrier board.
  2. Start your favorite terminal software (such as Minicom or TeraTerm) on your host PC and configure it for 115200 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit and no flow control.
  3. Plug the kit supplied 12V power adapter into the power connector X19 on the carrier board. You will instantly see power LEDs VCC_5V0 and VCC_3V3 on the carrier board light up solid green.

  4. Press the power button S2 on the carrier board. You will now see power LEDs VDD_3V3, VDD_5V0, and VDD_12V0 on the carrier board light up a solid green. You will also start to see console output on your terminal window. If everything was done correctly the board should boot completely into Linux, arriving at an am65xx-phycore-kit prompt. The default login account is root with an empty password.


    Troubleshooting

     Not seeing any output on the console?

    • Check that you have setup the terminal software correctly per step 2.
    • Make sure that you have selected the first of the two USB serial ports that enumerate after you plug the USB cable from your PC to the carrier board.

Building Images from Source

This section will show you how to configure your development host to build your own BSP images from source and how to start BSP image builds. Building BSP images from source is useful if you have made changes to the BSP sources and would like to deploy those changes in an easy and reproducible way.

Development Host Setup

Host Debian Packages

Yocto development requires certain packages to be installed. Run the following commands to ensure you have the packages installed:

Host (Ubuntu)

sudo apt-get install git build-essential python diffstat texinfo gawk chrpath dos2unix wget unzip socat doxygen libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libz1:i386 lib32stdc++6 lib32ncurses5 lib32z1 libc6-dev-i386 cpio gcc-multilib
CODE

The above is the recommended package installation for development on a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Linux distribution. For a breakdown of the packages as well as a list of packages required for other Linux distributions, see the "Required Packages for the Build Host" section in the Yocto Project Reference Manual: https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/2.6/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#required-packages-for-the-build-host

Bash Shell

Verify that the preferred shell for your Host PC is ''bash'' and not ''dash'':

Host (Ubuntu)

sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash
# Respond "No" to the prompt asking "Install dash as /bin/sh?"
bash
CODE

Repo Tool

Download and install the repo tool. This tool is used to obtain Yocto source from Git.

Host (Ubuntu)

cd /opt
sudo mkdir bin
# /opt/ directory has root permission, change the permissions so your user account can access this folder. In the following replace <user> with your specific username
sudo chown -R <user>: bin

cd bin
curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ./repo
# add directory that contains repo to your path
chmod a+x repo
CODE

Add the repo directory in your PATH, using export from the command line or permanently by including it in .bashrc:

Host (Ubuntu)

export PATH=/opt/bin/:$PATH
CODE

Git Setup

If you have not yet configured your Git environment on this machine, please execute the following commands to set your user name and email address. See here for more information on getting started with Git.

Host (Ubuntu)

git config --global user.email "your@email.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global http.sslcainfo /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
CODE

Setup the BSP Directory

Create a directory which will house your BSP development. In this example the BSP directory is /opt/PHYTEC_BSPs/. This is not a requirement and if another location is preferred (ex. ~/PHYTEC_BSPs) feel free to modify. We recommend using /opt over your HOME directory to avoid errors attributed to ~ syntax as well as the sudo requirement for the root filesystem and automation package building. We also recommend creating a package download directory (yocto_dl) separate from the yocto tree (yocto_ti), as it makes resetting the build environment easier and subsequent build times much faster.

Host (Ubuntu)

sudo mkdir -p /opt/PHYTEC_BSPs
cd /opt


# /opt directory has root permission, change the permissions so your user account can access this folder. In the following, replace <user> with your username
sudo chown -R <user>: PHYTEC_BSPs


cd PHYTEC_BSPs
mkdir yocto_ti
mkdir yocto_dl
cd yocto_ti
export YOCTO_DIR=`pwd`
CODE

At this point you will now be able to navigate to the Yocto directory using the $YOCTO_DIR environment variable.

Install the ARM Toolchain

Run the following commands to install the ARM toolchain:

Host (Ubuntu)

wget https://developer.arm.com/-/media/Files/downloads/gnu-a/8.3-2019.03/binrel/gcc-arm-8.3-2019.03-x86_64-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.xz
tar -Jxvf gcc-arm-8.3-2019.03-x86_64-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.xz -C /opt/PHYTEC_BSPs
wget https://developer.arm.com/-/media/Files/downloads/gnu-a/8.3-2019.03/binrel/gcc-arm-8.3-2019.03-x86_64-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.xz
tar -Jxvf gcc-arm-8.3-2019.03-x86_64-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.xz -C /opt/PHYTEC_BSPs
rm gcc-arm-8.3-2019.03-x86_64-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.xz gcc-arm-8.3-2019.03-x86_64-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.xz
CODE

Download the BSP Meta Layers

Download the manifest file for the latest BSP:

Host (Ubuntu)

cd $YOCTO_DIR 
repo init -u https://stash.phytec.com/scm/pub/manifests-phytec.git -b am65xx -m ALPHA3.xml
CODE

Download the Yocto meta layers specified in the manifest file:

Host (Ubuntu)

repo sync
CODE

Start the Build

Run the Yocto build directory setup script. The TEMPLATECONF variable is used to set the source of the local configuration files (conf/bblayers.conf and conf/local.conf), which are located in the meta-phytec layer:

Host (Ubuntu)

cd $YOCTO_DIR
TEMPLATECONF=$YOCTO_DIR/sources/meta-phytec/meta-phytec-ti/conf MACHINE=am65xx-phycore-kit source sources/oe-core/oe-init-build-env build
CODE

Open the build/conf/local.conf file using your preferred editor and make the following modifications:

  • Modify the the download directory to the yocto_dl directory that was created in the previous steps:

    build/conf/local.conf

    DL_DIR ?= "/opt/PHYTEC_BSPs/yocto_dl"
    CODE

  • Maximize build efficiency by modifying the BB_NUMBER_THREADS variable to suit your host development system. This sets the maximum number of tasks that BitBake should run in parallel. Also set the variable PARALLEL_MAKE to specify the number of threads that make can run. By default, these are already set to 4 in build/conf/local.conf:

    build/conf/local.conf

    # Parallelism options - based on cpu count
BB_NUMBER_THREADS ?= "4"
PARALLEL_MAKE ?= "-j 4"
    CODE

  • Add the following to a new line at the end of the file to set the TOOLCHAIN_BASE variable to point to where you extracted the toolchain:

    build/conf/local.conf

    TOOLCHAIN_BASE = "/opt/PHYTEC_BSPs"
    CODE

  • Be sure to save your changes to the local.conf file before closing.


The setup is complete and you now have everything ready to start a build. This BSP has been tested with the arago-core-tisdk-bundle and it is suggested that you start with this image before building other images. Alternate images are located in various meta layers at yocto_ti/sources/ meta*/recipes*/images/*.bb. They can be found using the command bitbake-layers show-recipes "*-image*" in $YOCTO_DIR/build/.


The following will start a build from scratch including installation of the toolchain as well as bootloader, Linux kernel, and root filesystem images.

Host (Ubuntu)

cd $YOCTO_DIR/build
MACHINE=am65xx-phycore-kit bitbake arago-core-tisdk-bundle
CODE

Built Images

All images generated by bitbake are deployed to $YOCTO_DIR/build/arago-tmp-external-arm-toolchain/deploy/images/am65xx-phycore-kit:

  • Bootloader: tiboot3.bin, tispl.bin, u-boot.img, and sysfw.itb
  • Kernel: Image
  • Kernel device tree file: k3-am65xx-phycore-kit.dtb
  • Kernel device tree overlays: k3-am65xx-phytec-expansion-sample.dtbo, k3-am65xx-phytec-lcd-018.dtbo, k3-am65xx-phytec-wlan.dtbo
  • Root Filesystem: tisdk-rootfs-image-am65xx-phycore-kit.tar.xz

Source Locations:

  • Kernel:  $YOCTO_DIR/build/arago-tmp-external-arm-toolchain/work/am65xx-phycore-kit-linux/linux-phytec-ti/4.19.59+git_v4.19.59-phy2-r0a/git/

    • The device tree file to modify within the linux kernel source is: k3-am65xx-phycore-kit.dts and its included dtsi files.

  • U-Boot:  $YOCTO_DIR/build/arago-tmp-external-arm-toolchain/work/am65xx-phycore-kit-linux/u-boot-phytec/2019.01+git_v2018.01-phy3-r0/git/

Build Time Optimizations

The build time will vary depending on the package selection and Host performance. Beyond the initial build, after making modifications to the BSP, a full build is not required. Use the following as a reference to take advantage of optimized build options and reduce the build time.

To rebuild U-Boot:

Host (Ubuntu)

bitbake u-boot-phytec u-boot-phytec-r5 -f -c compile && bitbake u-boot-phytec u-boot-phytec-r5
CODE

To rebuild the Linux kernel:

Host (Ubuntu)

bitbake linux-phytec-ti -f -c compile && bitbake linux-phytec-ti
CODE

The Yocto project's Bitbake User Manual provides useful information regarding build options:  http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/2.6/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual.html

Additional BSP Documentation