The Troubled life | Life with Hawkboard Part 4

Then I understood that uboot is just a bootloader and our hawkboard nand memory contains a built-in uboot and it needs to boot a Linux Kernel, which I need to provide it. The Linux Kernel should be provided with a root filesystem which contains our image processing application along with the necessary files like Linux system files, libraries, gcc, and other barebone things. This is a basic knowledge everyone who works in embedded should know, but since I was somebody who learns stuff when I get stuck rather than watching others and learning, it was a great eye opening knowledge for me at that time.

So now I am ready with a hawkboard connected to my ubuntu running laptop with serial to usb connector, and I can see the uboot command prompt as hawkboard> in my gtkterm screen.

The next logical step is to obtain a Linux Kernel bootable image file that is configured to work in hawkboard i.e. OMAP-L138. Along with the Linux Kernel I need to obtain a root filesystem having the necessary files and folders containing required data that will eventually give me a bash prompt from which I can call my image processing application when the hawkboard is fully ready. All this files and all should be build in such a way that it will run in an ARM system, so I may need to do some cross compilation inside my ubuntu laptop to build the above mentioned files.

Instead of building ARM based Linux Kernel image and Root filesystem in the first trial itself, I decided to use the files recommended by the hawkboard community itself. So that I can see my hawkboard booting and entering into a bash shell, without many troubles and delays that comes as part of using custom made files.

I download Linux Kernel image from

http://hawkboard.googlecode.com/files/uImage_v1

and RAM Disk image (actually a root filesystem which can be stored and loaded into RAM memory, instead of accessing a real root filesystem from a usb drive or sd card, but the bad side is the changes you make to the files in RAM Disk image will not be retained on next loading) from

http://hawkboard.googlecode.com/files/ramdisk_v1.gz

I stored both these files in my ubuntu laptop.

The Troubled life | Life with Hawkboard Part 3 B

But in my foolish mind, I thought it would be some problem with the board that it is not booting into a linux. So I decided to do a Booting uboot over the UART (serial port). I turned off the power supply to the board and changed the position of DIP switch to 1-OFF,2-ON,3-OFF,4-ON.
Downloaded the UART Host Utility from http://www-s.ti.com/sc/techlit/sprab41.zip . unzipped the file in a Windows system. Installed the AISgen_d800k006_Install_v1.7.exe and now I have a UART Host utility available in Program Files\Texas Inst… Note that it is better to install the above tool in a Windows system with .NET framework installed (you can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/net/download.aspx ).

You need to have windows hyperterminal tool for serial port communication before you do anything like booting uboot over UART. Now you need to connect your serial to usb converter into the usb port of your windows running computer. Rigth click the my computer and take the Properties. Click the tab of Advanced Settings and click button “Device Manager”. Device Manger window will open now. click on the arrow left to COM devices, there you can see all the COM peripherals connected to your computer right now. You can also your serial to usb converter and associated COM PORT like COM 19 etc. Open the hyperterminal and go to File>Properties and select COM 19 and click on its properties button and change the Bits per Second to 115200, Data bits to 8, Parity to None, Stop bits to 1, and Flow Control to None. Now click OK.

Now connect the hawkboard to serial to usb converter and power on it. Click the Telephone button on the Hyperterminal and press enter button. you can see a message
BOOT ME.
then click on the telephone hang button(else UART host utility can’t acess the hawkboard).
Then I opened the Uart Host Utility loaded u-boot_uart_ais_v1.bin from http://code.google.com/p/hawkboard/downloads/list as ais file. Selected COM19 and baud rate as 115200. Clicked on the Start button. A lot of messages came in the window and finaly something like (Serial Port): Closing COM19. Then I looked into the hyerterminal and clicked on the telephone button and pressed enter again I saw a “hawkboard>” prompt. Now I thought the board got some serious issues and it is the reason for the above behaviour.

Later after a lot of googling, I found that the problem is that I didn’t put a kernel and root filesystem into to the board to boot it up.

The Troubled life | Life with Hawkboard Part 3

The solution for such serial usb connector problem as mentioned in the previous post is just buy another cable and try your luck again. So I bought a “ch 340″ serial usb cable and connected the cable to computer and hawkboard again. Open the gtkterm and set the serial port communication parameters as done in the previous post. Power on the hawkboard. We can see the uboot prompt “hawkboard>” after some initial messages.

U-Boot 2009.01-dirty (Nov 18 2009 – 23:30:48)

DRAM:  128 MB
NAND:  NAND device: Manufacturer ID: 0x2c, Chip ID: 0xa1 (Micron NAND
128MiB 1,8V 8-bit)
Bad block table found at page 65472, version 0×01
Bad block table found at page 65408, version 0×01
nand_read_bbt: Bad block at 0x008a0000
nand_read_bbt: Bad block at 0x014e0000
128 MiB
*** Warning – bad CRC or NAND, using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
ARM Clock : 300000000 Hz
DDR Clock : 150000000 Hz
Ethernet PHY: GENERIC @ 0×07
………………………………………………
hawkboard>

Now the situvation is that there is no pre installed linux (ramdisk) written in Nand memory of the board or there is no linux in memory card to boot into.  The hawkboard> prompt is the uboot prompt where you can set values for various kernel boot arguments before issuing the boot command to boot into the linux.

 

The Troubled life | Life with Hawkboard Part 2

The Hawkboard has a male DB9 (RS 232 serial) connector on it. I wanted to make some initial testing on the Hawkboard. I got a DB9 to USB cable from a friend (My laptop has no serial port). But the cable also has DB9 male pins. I bought two DB9 female pins (Found no DB9 female to usb cable in shops). Connected the pin2 and pin3 of one DB9 female to pin3 and pin2 of other. Then connected pin5 to pin5. Thus I made a DB9 female to DB9 female connector. Thus using the DB9 male to usb and this hand made DB9 female to DB9 female I made the connection between my laptop and Hawkboard. The DB9 male to usb connecting cable I used was HL 2303. I installed “gtkterm” in my debian system by typing apt-get install gtkterm in root terminal.

I checked, to which usb port the serial cable is connected by typing dmesg |tail in terminal and found the device name as ttyUSB0. Opened the gtkterm and in “Configuration>Port” selected>
Port: ttyUSB0
Speed: 115200
Parity: None
Bits: 8
Stopbits: 1
Flow control

The I powered the Hawkboard using the Power Adapter. What I found in the Gtkterm screen was some ‘h’ running repeatedly like hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, when I pressed ‘e’ in my keyboard I found eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Some times
it will show
hawkboard>
hawkboard>
hawkboard>
……. goes on.

I had no idea on what was going on. I powered off the board and tried again and again, but stuck with same result. Sometimes I can see some garbage values floating over the screen. It was a terrible experience. I will tell you how I managed to get over that next time.

The Troubled life | Life with Hawkboard Part 1

Hi Friends,

Me brought an embedded dsp board named “Hawkboard” from Innovate Solutions Bagalore. Almost square in shape, its dimensions are around 9 x 10 cm. It’s based on a Texas Instruments OMAP-L138 Low-Power Applications Processor with an integrated 300 MHz ARM926EJ-S RISC MPU, and a floating-point C674xVLIW DSP. 128MB RAM and 128MB NAND Flash.

My Aim was to port an DSP powered OpenCV application into the Board which run on an Embedded Linux. Life was horrible from the Day of September 18 till now as my all struggles to get this nasty thing working went wrong in all directions.

I had no experience with an embedded board and only thing I did past was developed an application in 8051 microcontroller. It was a successful mini project. Now for craziness I went to find my luck in Hawkboard. When I bought this board I had a 2GB SD card, 5V power Adapter. I had no idea on the things like “what to do?”, “how to do?”. Searched the google for a pretty tutorial and helps, but I found that the people talking about this board are not Novice, they have a lot of backbround in Embedded field, so the problem was that they assume “we know something which is basics”, they say in their blogs that you set that this way, don’t do that, this etc etc etc. Initially I found very confusing as different people are ginving advice in different methods and ways in their blogs and most of them were partial. So my first decision was to set up a blog on “how to” of hawkboard so that other people who also want to give a try with hawkboard may benefit.

Bharatham 2011 ! Rajputs Won the Decennial Cup

House of Rajputs won the Decennial Bharatham Cup with an amazing lead of 70 points.
Congrats to all and all. Special congrats to our Captians Anto George (S8 ece a) and
Sreeja (S8 ece b). House of Vikings came second with an superb marathon from last
to second place.

visit ma picasa for pictures.