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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

visit ma picasa for pictures.

I was using Nokia E63 with BSNL mobile gprs ( bsnlnet ), in ubuntu.
I have done this without using any grphical utility.

Steps:
Install wvdial. ( In ubuntu wvdial package and its dependencies are within the installation cd; check /pool/main/w/wvstreams and /pool/main/w/wvdial )
Now connect the phone to linux using datacable and select pc suite mode in phone.

Edit the /etc/wvdial.conf file.
$sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf
replace the content with
[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”bsnlnet”,”",0,0
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99***1#
Password = 944*******
Username = 944*******
New PPPD = yes
Stupid Mode = yes
#Auto DNS = yes
give your username and password properly replacing the 944******* in the above text ( you can use your mobile number ) , for aircel, replace bsnlnet with aircelgprs and airtelgprs.com for airtel and save the file

Connect to net. Call the wvdial command
$sudo wvdial

This should connect you to internet, check firefox.

Have a nice time.

2) type sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cd/

3) if you are not a sudoer then type su and type root password and then type nano /etc/sudoers

4) Under the User Privilege specification you can see
root   ALL=(ALL) ALL

5) under the above option add similar time but replace “root” with your “name” then save the file and logout from the root mode

6) type cd /media/cd

7) sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

I Arun David here by declare that I am going to dig deep deep deep into Linux kernel to get to know the nuts and bolts of it.
This post series will not be a continuous one, but a “find one then post” like storyboard. I always loved to go into the roots of the opensource technology and this is the right most time for it. Will continue my post on other things too.

We went for a 7 day training at ITI, Bangalore. Those days were really Happy Days.

The photos we took there is stored at ma picasa.