How to Use an ESP8266 Board as a WiFi to Serial Debug Board

Telnet and SSH are great to access a Linux device, machine and computer remotely when they are already running, but when you are working on the bootloader and/or kernel themselves, you’ll have to use a serial port to access the terminal / serial console. Boards used to get an RS232 port which you connected to your computer with a NULL modem cable, but these days, most boards and devices expose TTL signals and require a USB to TTL debug board to access the console via a USB cable. If you only have one device close to you computer that’s fine, but if your testbed is a little further. or you need to access the serial console on multiple boards you could consider using ESP8266 module to export the terminal over WiFi. This is exactly what Zoobab did above with a GL.inet router running OpenWRT and NodeMCU board with ESP-12(E) module […]

Beyond Debug Key Enables JTAG & UART Debugging, Supports OpenOCD

Beyond Semiconductor, a fabless semiconductor company based in Slovenia which develops their own 32-bit BA2x IP cores, has sent me one of their development tool, namely Beyond Debug Key supporting JTAG and UART interfaces either with BeyondStudio for the company’s BA2x processor, or the open source suite OpenOCD for other processors. Since I don’t have any Beyond Semi boards, I instead configured it, and quickly tried it with Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained ARM Cortex A5 development board, and OpenOCD (Open On-Chip Debugger). The debug tool comes in the package above describing the key features of the kit: Performance Transfer rate in excess of 600 kB/s 30 MHz maximum JTAG clock Less than 20 μW power draw from target board Compatibility Fully compatible with Beyond BA2x processor family Access any 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit processors via JTAG Works with all JTAG compliant devices Software Support OpenOCD for access to a range […]

Linaro 14.08 Release with Kernel 3.16 and Android 4.4.4

I’m a little late for that one, as Linaro 14.08 was released last Thursday. Nevertheless, this release features Linux kernel 3.16 (baseline), Linux 3.10.52 (LSK), and Android 4.4.4. As usual Linaro has worked on member hardware such as Qualcomm based IFC6410 and ARM Juno &Vexpress boards. They’ve also committed changes for LLVM, big Endian, and added a workload generator tool (rt-app) to the Ubuntu and Android image. This tool has been developed and used by the power management working group, presumably to measure and optimize power consumption under various loads. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.16-2014.08 GATOR version 5.19 (new version) updated topic from Qualcomm LT (ifc6410 board support) updated Versatile Express ARM64 support (FVP Base and Foundation models, Juno) from ARM LT (Landing Team) updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT updated LLVM topic (follows the community llvmlinux-latest branch) Big endian support (the 2014.05 topic […]

ARM TechCon 2014 Schedule – 64-Bit, IoT, Optimization & Debugging, Security and More

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2014 will take place on October 1 – 3, 2014, in Santa Clara, and as every year, there will be a conference with various sessions for suitable engineers and managers, as well as an exposition where companies showcase their latest ARM based products and solutions. The detailed schedule for the conference has just been made available. Last year,  there were 90 sessions organized into 15 tracks, but this year, despite received 300 applications,  the organizers decided to scale it down a bit, and there will be 75 session in the following 11 tracks: Chip Implementation Debugging Graphics Heterogeneous Compute New Frontiers Power Efficiency Safety and Security Software Development and Optimization Software Optimization for Infrastructure and Cloud System Design Verification There are also some paid workshops that take all day with topics such as “Android (NDK) and ARM overview”, “ARM and the Internet of Things”, or “ARM […]

Element14 Design Center Helps You find a Development Board and Tools for Your Project

Element14 has just launched a Design Center, currently in beta version, which let’s you do parametric searches for development kits, debuggers, software tools, by tools vendor, silicon manufacturers, board features, and processor architecture / type. So for example if you want to work on a low power Linux based gateway with Ethernet and Zigbee, you may search for a board with Ethernet and Zigbee, and comes with an ARM Cortex A5 processor. In this example, the website returned four SAMA5D3x evaluation kits from Atmel which support Ethernet, as well as Zigbee via an external module. Then if you want to find which tools are available from Atmel, you can select “Emulation and Debugging”, “IDE & Compiler”, and “Operating Systems & Stacks”, as well as “Atmel” and “ARM” core architecture which will return Atmel Studio 6, and a JTAG emulator. It’s not quite perfect, as the only features you can search […]

Embedded Linux Conference 2014 Schedule

The Tenth Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2014) will take place on April 29 – May 1, 2014 at the San Jose Marriott in San Jose, California. The event will feature 90+ sessions on embedded Linux, Android and IoT with over 450 attendees expected to attend. It will also be co-located with Android Builders Summit and the AllSeen Alliance Hackfest. Even if you can’t attend it’s still interesting to see what will be discussed at the event to get a grasp of on-going developments, learn a few things about different optimization techniques, and so on. So I’ve gone through the sessions’ description, and I’ve designed my own virtual schedule with sessions that could be of interest. April 29 9:00 – 9:30 – Keynote: The Paradox of embedded and Open Source by Tim Bird, Sony Mobile Linux has taken the embedded world by storm.  Billions (with a ‘B’) of devices have now shipped […]

Linaro 14.01 Release with Linux Kernel 3.13 and Android 4.4.2

The first release of the year, Linaro 14.01, is now out with Linux Kernel 3.13 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.28 (LSK), Android 4.4.2, and Ubuntu Linaro 14.01. The most important part of this release is support for Arndale Octa, which makes big.LITTLE processing code available to a low cost platform. Android 4.4.x is now on par with Android 4.3 in terms of support. Linaro has also decided to provide quarterly stable released with GCC, and Linaro GCC 4.7-2014.01 is the first quarterly stable release with the next one planned with Linaro 14.04. Here are the highlights of this release: Linaro Stable Kernel (LSK) 3.10.28-2014.01 with latest version of GTS patch set for big.LITTLE, and Android support Linux Linaro 3.13-2014.01: gator version 5.17 updated linaro-android-3.13-merge topic by John Stultz, the “Revert “PM / Sleep: Require CAP_BLOCK_SUSPEND to use wake_lock/wake_unlock” patch included uprobes v4 updated big-LITTLE-pmu topic from ARM Landing Team (LT) updated […]

Cheap Accessories for Raspberry Pi – Camera, microSD adapter, Debug Board, Heatsink and Enclosure

The Raspberry Pi just a great low cost ARM Linux board that costs $25 (Model A) to $35 (Model B), but once you start to add accessories the total cost of ownership may creep up quickly, and in some cases accessories may be more expensive than the board itself. I’ll list some alternative accessories that can be purchased online for a fraction of the cost of the more famous one. $18 Raspberry Pi Camera The official Raspberry Pi camera costs $25 + shipping and tax, but you can get a similar 5MP CSI camera for just $18.13 including shipping on Banggood.com. This camera clone should be software compatible with the original one according to the listed features: Plugs directly into the CSI connector on the Raspberry Pi 5MP resolution image (2592 x 1944), or 1080p HD video recording at 30fps 5MP (2592 x 1944 pixels) Omnivision 5647 sensor in a […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case