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This page will help guide you through learning about the NXP Linux® OS BSP and i.MX6SL EVK.
Evaluation Kit Contains:
- MCIMX6SLEVK
- Micro USB-B-2-USB-Type A male, V2.0 cable
- 100/240 V input, 5 V, 2.4 A output W/AC adaptor power supply
- Quick Start Guide
- Two SD cards: Programmed Android™
1.1 Get Familiar with the Board
1.2 Insert the SD Card (SD3)
The kit comes with an SD card with a pre-built NXP Linux® BSP image. Without modifying the system, booting from the image will provide a default system with certain features for building other applications on top of Linux®.
To understand more about NXP Linux® BSP image, please continue reading the next section: BSP Introduction.
1.3 Connect USB Debug Cable
Connect the micro-B end of the supplied USB cable into Debug UART port J509. Connect the other end of the cable to a host computer.
Terminal window configuration: 115200 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity
On Linux® host machine, run the following command to determine the port number:
$ ls /dev/ttyUSB*
Use the following command to install serial communication program:
$ sudo apt-get install minicom
On Windows,
To determine the port number of the i.MX board virtual COM port, open the device manager and look under the "Ports" group.
If needed, the serial-to-USB drivers can be found at ftdichip.com/FTDrivers.htm.
Not sure how to use a terminal application? Try one of these tutorials:
1.4 Connect HDMI (optional)
Connect an HDMI cable to the HDMI connector J8. Connect the other end to the HDMI cable to an HDMI capable monitor.
1.5 Connect User Interface Devices (optional)
Attach a keyboard and mouse to interact with the OS GUI displayed on the monitor. Attach a micro-USB hub to micro-USB jack J505 and connect the keyboard and mouse to the hub if more than one devices are used.*
*Note: A micro B male to A female adapter cable may be needed.
1.6 Connect Ethernet Cable (optional)
Connect an Ethernet cable to the Ethernet jack J7.
1.7 Connect Power Supply
Connect the 5 V power supply cable to the 5 V DC power jack P1.
When powered on, the processor starts executing code from on-chip ROM. With default Boot Switch setup, this code reads the fuses to find out which media to search for a bootable image. Then it will find the SD card and begin U-Boot execution automatically.
Information will be printed in the serial console. If you don't stop the U-boot process, it will boot the Linux® kernel.
1.8 Congratulations! Your Linux® is booted!
Once Linux® is booted, you can login with username root and no password.
To jump in U-Boot, press any key before the value of the U-Boot environment variable, "bootdelay", decreases and before it times out (default 3 seconds). If you stop the U-boot process, you can run the following command to boot Linux® again:
U-Boot >boot
Tera Term Tutorial
Tera Term is a very popular open source terminal emulation application. This program can be used to display information sent from your NXP development platform's virtual serial port.
- Download Tera Term from SourceForge. After the download, run the installer and then return to this webpage to continue.
- Launch Tera Term. The first time it launches, it will show you the following dialog. Select the serial option. Assuming your board is plugged in, there should be a COM port automatically populated in the list.
- Configure the serial port settings (using the COM port number identified earlier) to 115200 baud rate, 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit. To do this, go to Setup -> Serial Port and change the settings.
- Verify that the connection is open. If connected, Tera Term will show something like below in it's title bar.
- You're ready to go
PuTTY Tutorial
PuTTY is a popular terminal emulation application. This program can be used to display information sent from your NXP development platform's virtual serial port.
- Download PuTTY using the button below. After the download, run the installer and then return to this webpage to continue.
- Launch PuTTY by either double clicking on the *.exe file you downloaded or from the Start menu, depending on the type of download you selected.
- Configure In the window that launches, select the Serial radio button and enter the COM port number that you determined earlier. Also enter the baud rate, in this case 115200.
- Click Open to open the serial connection. Assuming the board is connected and you entered the correct COM port, the terminal window will open. If the configuration is not correct, PuTTY will alert you.
- You're ready to go
Choose a Development Path:
2.1 Overview
Before the Linux® OS kernel can boot on an i.MX board, the Linux® image needs to be copied to a boot device and the boot switches need to be set to boot that device.
To bring up the board and run Linux®, four elements are needed:
- Boot loader (U-Boot)
- Linux® kernel image (zImage)
- A device tree file (.dtb) for the board being used
- A root file system (rootfs) for the particular Linux® image
2.2 Prepare a Linux® BSP Image
The release contains a pre-built SD card image that is built specifically for the i.MX 6Quad Sabre-SD board. The SD card image is a file that is typically named
The pre-built NXP Linux® Binary Demo Image provides a typical system and basic set of features for using and evaluating the processor. Without modifying the system, the users can evaluate hardware interfaces, test SoC features, and run user space applications.
With the source code and documentation, the users also can customize the Linux® image built for your own device, i.e. add or remove system components.
The Yocto Project is the framework of choice with NXP professional support to build the images that are used for booting a Linux® kernel, although other methods can be used.
For more details, see NXP Yocto Project User's Guide here
2.3 Download Linux® BSP Image
There are various ways to download the Linux® BSP image for different boards, boot devices, and results desired.
For Getting-Started, we only list the few methods to transfer the BSP image to SD card.Experienced Linux® developer can explore other options.
The .sdcard image (either from a pre-built or self-built BSP image) is an SD card image that can be flashed directly. This is the simplest way to load everything needed onto the card with one command.
When more flexibility is desired, an SD card can be loaded with the individual components (bootloader, kernel, dtb file and rootfs file) one-by-one or the .sdcard image can be loaded and the individual parts can be overwritten with the specific components.
An SD/MMC card reader is required to transfer the bootloader and kernel images to initialize the partition table and copy the root file system.
Linux® host:
The Linux® kernel running on the Linux® host assigns a device node to the SD/MMC card reader.
To identify the device node assigned to the SD/MMC card, carry out the following command in the host computer:
WARNING: The instructions below will permanently delete existing content on the SD card and are dangerous to your PC if run incorrectly. If you have question or would like further details please consult the i.MX Linux® User's Guide.
$ cat /proc/partitions
Carry out the following command to copy the SD card image to the SD/MMC card. Change sdx below to match the one used by the SD card.
$ sudo dd if= of=/dev/sd bs=1M && sync
where
WARNING: Make sure that the device node is correct for the SD/MMC card. Otherwise, it may damage your operating system or data on the hard disk of your computer.
To setup the partition manually, please read 4.3.3 in i.MX Linux® User's Guide
To load individual component separately when the full SD card image is not used, please read 4.3.4-3.4.6 in i.MX Linux® User's Guide
The U-Boot bootloader is able to download images over Ethernet to RAM and then writes to an SD card. For this operation. Network communications need to be configured.
For instructions about how to download U-Boot to an MMC/SD card that is not the one used to boot from, please refer to section 4.4.1
Images can be downloaded to other boot media (memory storage device) using U-Boot.To use other memory device, please refer to sections under 4.4.1
The Manufacturing Tool, named MfgTool, is a tool that runs on a Windows OS host and is used to download images to different devices on an i.MX board. The tar.gz file can be found with the pre-built Linux® BSP image.
Use Manufacturing Tool2.4 Boot Switch Setup
The boot modes of the i.MX boards are controlled by the boot configuration DIP switches on the board.
TABLE 1: BOOT OPTIONS
| S1_2 BOOT_MODE1 |
S1_1 BOOT_MODE0 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Boot from fuses | 0 | 0 |
| Serial DownloaderD | 0 | 1 |
| Internal Boot | 1 | 0 |
| Reserved | 1 | 1 |
TABLE 2: SW3 CONFIGURATION
| SW3_8 BT_CFG1_0 |
SW3_7 BT_CFG1_1 |
SW3_6 BT_CFG1_2 |
SW3_5 BT_CFG1_3 |
SW3_4 BT_CFG1_4 |
SW3_3 BT_CFG1_5 |
SW3_2 BT_CFG1_6 |
SW3_1 BT_CFG1_7 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD1 | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| SD2D | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| SD3 | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| SD4 | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| EMMC | X | X | * | * | * | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| SPI NOR | X | X | X | X | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
TABLE 3: SW4 CONFIGURATION
| SW4_8 BT_CFG2_0 |
SW4_7 BT_CFG2_1 |
SW4_6 BT_CFG2_2 |
SW4_5 BT_CFG2_3 |
SW4_4 BT_CFG2_4 |
SW4_3 BT_CFG2_5 |
SW4_2 BT_CFG2_6 |
SW4_1 BT_CFG2_7 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD1 | * | X | X | 0 | 0 | 1 | * | * |
| SD2D | * | X | X | 1 | 0 | 1 | * | * |
| SD3 | * | X | X | 0 | 1 | 1 | * | * |
| SD4 | * | X | X | 1 | 1 | 1 | * | * |
| EMMC | * | * | * | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| SPI NOR | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
TABLE 4: SW5 CONFIGURATION
| SW5_8 BT_CFG4_0 |
SW5_7 BT_CFG4_1 |
SW5_6 BT_CFG4_2 |
SW5_5 BT_CFG4_3 |
SW5_4 BT_CFG4_4 |
SW5_3 BT_CFG4_5 |
SW5_2 BT_CFG4_6 |
SW5_1 BT_CFG4_7 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD1 | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SD2D | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SD3 | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SD4 | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| EMMC | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SPI NOR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | X | X |
X: None specified
D: Default configuration
*: Switch needs to be configured for high or low depending on the application needs. Please check reference manual for boot configuration options.
**: 1 = power cycle on power-up via SDa_RST_B (SD3_RST). 0 = no power cycle
For boot switch setup to boot from other device (SD3 and SATA), please refer to 4.5 in i.MX Linux® User Guide
This section walks through the booting process of the i.MX 6QuadPlus SABRE board with the Android™ system image and briefly introduce how to build the software components that create your own system image. For more information about building the Android™ platform, see source.android.com/source/building.html
Current releases of Demo Images and source code can be found on www.nxp.com/imx6tools
2.1 Overview
The storage devices on the development system (MMC/SD or NAND) must be programmed with the U-Boot boot loader. The i.MX 6 series boot process determines what storage device to access based on the switch settings. When the boot loader is loaded and begins execution, the U-Boot environment space is then read to determine how to proceed with the boot process.
The images from the prebuilt release package or created from source code contain:
- U-Boot image: u-boot.imx
- boot image: boot.img
- Android™ system root image: system.img
- Recovery root image: recovery.img
2.2 Prepare an Android™ BSP Image
The images needed to create an Android™ system can either be obtained from the release package or be built from source.
The pre-built NXP Android™ demo image will provide a default system with certain features for purpose of evaluation. Without modifying the system, the users can perform some basic operations, and interact with the system to test hardware interfaces and develop software application in the user space.
The latest pre-built demo files can be found in Android™ section at www.nxp.com/imx6tools
Preparation
To build the Android™ source files, use a computer running Linux® OS. Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit) version is the most tested OS for the Android NXP BSP Release.
After installing the computer running Linux® OS, check whether you have all the necessary packages installed for an Android™ build. See "Setting up your machine" on the Android™ website source.android.com/source/initializing.html.
In addition to the packages requested on the Android™ website, please refer to Android™ User Guide to install the additional packages.
Get the source code
Get the Android™ source code from Google repo.
Get the kernel source code and U-Boot from Freescale open source git.
Patch
Apply all the i.MX Android™ patches. For details, please refer to Android™ User Guide.
Build
The build configuration command lunch can be issued with an argument
Here is an example to build the Android™ image with user type for the i.MX 6Quadplus SABRE Board:
$ cd ~/myandroid$ source build/envsetup.sh$ lunch sabresd_6dq-user$ make 2>&1 | tee build-log.txtWhen the make command is complete, the build-log.txt file contains the execution output. Check for any errors
To create Android™ platform over-the-air, OTA, and package, the following make target is specified:
$ make otapackage
Note: U-Boot mage, kernel uImage, boot.img can be built separately.
2.3 Download Android™ BSP Image
The Linux® utility "dd" on the computer running Linux® OS can be used to download the images into the SD card.
Before downloading, ensure that your partitions are created as described in Storage partitions.
The Manufacturing Tool, named MfgTool, is a tool that runs on a Windows OS host and is used to download images to target devices on an i.MX board. The tar.gz file can be downloaded in Manufacturing Tools section at www.nxp.com/imx6tools
Use Manufacturing Tool2.4 Boot Switch Setup
The boot modes of the i.MX boards are controlled by the boot configuration switches on the board.
For boot switch setup to boot from NAND/TFTP/NFS, please refer to section 6.2-6.3 in i.MX Android User's Guide
TABLE 1: BOOT OPTIONS
| S1_2 BOOT_MODE1 |
S1_1 BOOT_MODE0 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Boot from fuses | 0 | 0 |
| Serial DownloaderD | 0 | 1 |
| Internal Boot | 1 | 0 |
| Reserved | 1 | 1 |
TABLE 2: SW3 CONFIGURATION
| SW3_8 BT_CFG1_0 |
SW3_7 BT_CFG1_1 |
SW3_6 BT_CFG1_2 |
SW3_5 BT_CFG1_3 |
SW3_4 BT_CFG1_4 |
SW3_3 BT_CFG1_5 |
SW3_2 BT_CFG1_6 |
SW3_1 BT_CFG1_7 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD1 | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| SD2D | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| SD3 | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| SD4 | * | ** | * | * | * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| EMMC | X | X | * | * | * | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| SPI NOR | X | X | X | X | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
TABLE 3: SW4 CONFIGURATION
| SW4_8 BT_CFG2_0 |
SW4_7 BT_CFG2_1 |
SW4_6 BT_CFG2_2 |
SW4_5 BT_CFG2_3 |
SW4_4 BT_CFG2_4 |
SW4_3 BT_CFG2_5 |
SW4_2 BT_CFG2_6 |
SW4_1 BT_CFG2_7 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD1 | * | X | X | 0 | 0 | 1 | * | * |
| SD2D | * | X | X | 1 | 0 | 1 | * | * |
| SD3 | * | X | X | 0 | 1 | 1 | * | * |
| SD4 | * | X | X | 1 | 1 | 1 | * | * |
| EMMC | * | * | * | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| SPI NOR | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
TABLE 4: SW5 CONFIGURATION
| SW5_8 BT_CFG4_0 |
SW5_7 BT_CFG4_1 |
SW5_6 BT_CFG4_2 |
SW5_5 BT_CFG4_3 |
SW5_4 BT_CFG4_4 |
SW5_3 BT_CFG4_5 |
SW5_2 BT_CFG4_6 |
SW5_1 BT_CFG4_7 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD1 | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SD2D | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SD3 | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SD4 | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| EMMC | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| SPI NOR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | X | X |
To boot with HDMI displays, please refer to section 3.4 for more instructions.
Manufacturing Tool Tutorial - Linux
- Connect a USB cable from a computer to the USB OTG port on the board.
- No dedicated boot DIP switches are reserved for serial download mode on i.MX 6 Quad/QuadPlus SABRE-SD board.
One way is to set the boot mode to boot from SD slot SD3 but do not insert the SD card, and power on the board. After the message "HID Compliant device" is displayed, the board enters serial download mode. Then insert the SD card into SD slot SD3.See "4.5.11 Serial download mode for the Manufacturing Tool" in i.MX Linux® User Guide. - Power on the board.
- Choose the correct *.vbs file according to the target device. The manufacturing tool automatically pulls the required files based on the device. The default profile of the Manufacturing Tool assumes that your file system is packed and compressed using the bzip2 algorithm. You can also modify the profile to support other formats.
- After the image downloading is done, set the boot switch to boot up the board. See next step in Section 2 in this Getting Started Tutorial or Section "How to boot the i.MX boards" in the document.
For details, please refer to 4.2 Manufacutring Tool in i.MX Linux® User's Guide.
You can connect a USB cable from the debug UART port to the computer and open a serial communication program for for console output.
Manufacturing Tool Tutorial - Android™
- Connect a USB cable from a computer running Windows OS to the USB OTG port on the board.
- Unzip the mfgtools.tar.gz file to a selected loation. The directory is named MFGTool-Dir in this example.
- Copy the BSP image to to the path: MFGTool-Dir/Profiles/Linux/OS Firmware/files/android/sabresd
- No dedicated boot DIP switches are reserved for serial download mode on i.MX 6 Quad/QuadPlus SABRE-SD board.One way is to change the SABRE-SD SW6 (boot) to 00001100 (from 1-8 bit) to enter download mode.
- Power on the board.
- Double-click the file *.vbs according to the target device.
- Click "Start" to start downloading. the status bar shows the download status. The download may take one to two minutes depending on the host machine.
- After the image downloading is done, set the boot switch to boot up the board according to the table in the next step.
For details, please refer to "3.3 Downloading Board Images" in i.MX Android™ Quick Start Guide
You can connect a USB cable from the debug UART port to the computer and open a serial communication program for for console output.
3.1 Key Features Demo in Linux®
With Linux® running on the i.MX platform, you can evaluate special features that i.MX SoCs provide:
There are three main power management techniques on i.MX boards:
- Suspend and resume commands
- CPU frequency scaling
- Bus frequency scaling
After Linux® setup, for more details about developing applications in user space. Please see i.MX6 Linux® Reference Manual.
3.2 Application development
After Linux® setup, for more details about developing applications in user space. Please see i.MX6 Linux® Reference Manual.
3.3 Yocto Project
NXP Yocto Project User's Guide covers how to set up the Linux® host machine, how to run and configure a Yocto Project, generate an image, and generate a rootfs
For more details, see NXP Yocto Project User's Guide
3.4 Extended Features in Android™
The i.MX Android™ Wi-Fi Display Sink APIs allows a device to act as Wi-Fi Display Sink to render the audio and video contents from Wi-Fi Display Source in real time.
Using the i.MX Android™ Wi-Fi Display Sink APIs, an Android™ application can perform the following:
- Scan for other Wi-Fi Display Source devices.
- Get self peer name and MAC address.
- Set the device name which is displayed in other Wi-Fi Display devices.
- Set the display surface to render the RTSP streaming from the Wi-Fi Display Source Device.
- Start or stop the RTSP streaming between Wi-Fi Display Source and Sink.
- Disconnect Wi-Fi display connection from P2P layer.
- Send the input event to the Wi-Fi Display Source device, which known as UIBC.
The HDCP2.X (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) function based on the Android™ Extended Wi-Fi Display Sink Release package is designed to create a secure connection between a source and a display by enabling:
- The High Assurance Boot (HAB) for an Android™ image
- Generation and provision keyblob for HDCP2.X key.
The features described in the release notes are supported by NXP implemented media framework OMXPlayer. They are only available after applied android_L5.1.1_2.0.0-ga_omxplayer_source.tar.gz software package.
Only codecs that have no license restriction are included in OMXPlayer package.
Check Video/Audio decoder/encoder in i.MX Android Extended Codec Release Notes
To install the OMXPlayer package, perform the following steps:
- Copy the OMXPlayer package to the Android™ root directory.
- Go to the Android™ root directory and decompress the OMXPlayer package.
This step generates the device/fsl-codec, external/fsl_imx_omx, lean_obj_before_building.sh, and switch_build_to.sh.
$ source build/envsetup.sh$ lunch # e.g., sabresd_6dq-user $./switch_build_to.sh full$./clean_obj_before_building.sh$make3.5 Further resources
The default boot mode configures the system to display the UI on the MCIMX28LCD (sold separately). To change the default configuration and enable the MCIMXHDMICARD daughte rcard (sold separately), hit any key to stop u-boot from proceeding. Once prompt is visible, the u-boot can be configured as follows:
For LCD boot up, type the following commands (as one line):
setenv bootargs console=ttymxc0,115200 init=/initandroidboot.console=ttymxc0panel=lcdsaveenvreset
For HDMI boot up, type the following commands (as one line):
setenv bootargs console=ttymxc0,115200 init=/initandroidboot.console=ttymxc0panel=hdmisaveenvreset