RNX-iMX93-SMARC Yocto Linux

Overview

The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that helps developers create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products, regardless of the hardware architecture.
This article show how to build Yocto Image for RNX-iMX93-SMARC CPU module using:

	Linux Kernel	U-BOOT
Yocto micledore	6.1.55	v2023.04

Learn more about Yocto

Setting Boot mode

Boot mode setting on carrier board

BOOT	J4:1-2	J4:3-4	J4:5-6	J4:7-8
Cortex-A55 Serial Downloader	close	open	open	open
Cortex-A55, eMMC	open	close	open	open

Terminal Setup

The carrier board connects the host PC using the micro-B USB connector (J3).
Common serial communication programs such as Minicom, HyperTerminal, Tera Term, or PuTTY can be used.
The RNX-iMX93-SMARC board uses the first port for the Arm Cortex-A cores console.

Installing required packages

Please make sure your host PC is running Ubuntu 20.04+ 64-bit and install the following packages:

$ sudo apt-get install gawk wget git diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib \
build-essential chrpath socat cpio python3 python3-pip python3-pexpect \
xz-utils debianutils iputils-ping libsdl1.2-dev xterm python-is-python3 lz4

$ sudo apt-get install autoconf libtool libglib2.0-dev libarchive-dev python-git-doc \
sed cvs subversion coreutils texi2html docbook-utils \
help2man make gcc g++ desktop-file-utils libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev \
mercurial automake groff curl lzop asciidoc u-boot-tools dos2unix mtd-utils pv \
libncurses5 libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libelf-dev zlib1g-dev bmap-tools

More details about the Yocto Environment Setup can be found on the Yocto official site

Download Yocto based on Freescale Community BSP

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email "Your Email"

$ mkdir ~/bin 
$ curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo
$ export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

$ mkdir ~/yocto-ronetix
$ cd ~/yocto-ronetix

• Download the Yocto repository
  

$ repo init -u https://github.com/ronetix/imx-manifest -b imx-linux-mickledore -m imx-6.1.55-2.2.0.xml
$ repo sync

Setup and build Yocto

• Setup first time:

$ MACHINE=rnx-imx93-smarc DISTRO=fsl-imx-xwayland source ./imx-setup-release.sh -b build-rnx-imx93-smarc

• or setup if already configured:

$ source setup-environment build-rnx-imx93-smarc

• Build:

$ bitbake imx-image-core

Note: If the Ubuntu Terminal is crashed without any notification, see here: FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Build Results

The resulted images are located in tmp/deploy/images/rnx-imx93-smarc.

Booting Linux

This section describes how to copy the images (U-Boot, Linux kernel, device tree, and rootfs) to the eMMC device on the module.

Universal update utility

The Universal Update Utility (UUU) runs on a Windows or Linux OS host and is used to download images to devices on an i.MX board.

Downloading UUU

Download UUU version 1.5.21 or later from https://github.com/nxp-imx/mfgtools/releases

Write the WIC image into eMMC

Follow the instructions below:

• Connect a USB cable from a computer to the J9, port USB-0 (Micro-AB) port on the carrier board for download link.
• Connect a USB cable from J3, port UART-DBG (Micro-AB) port to the computer for console output.
• Open a Terminal emulator program
• Set the boot mode to "Cortex-A55 Serial Downloader", see #Setting Boot mode

 $ cd tmp/deploy/images/rnx-imx93-smarc
 $ uuu -b emmc_all imx-boot-rnx-imx93-smarc-sd.bin-flash_singleboot imx-image-core-rnx-imx93-smarc.wic.zst

Note: If the programming freezes with last message "Failed to configure default pinctrl", then try with another USB cable or USP port on your PC.

Boot Linux

• set the boot mode to "Cortex-A55, eMMC", see #Setting Boot mode
• reset the board

WiFi Setup

Scan for wireless networks:

 $ ifconfig wlan0 up
 $ iw dev wlan0 scan | grep SSID

Connecting to an Access Point:

 $ wpa_passphrase <YourAP> <YourPassword> > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 $ wpa_supplicant -B -D nl80211 -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

wait for:

 $ wlcore: Association completed.

Get an IP via DHCP:

 $ udhcpc -i wlan0
 $ ifconfig

Audio Test

List all sound cards:

 $ aplay -L 

Play a file:

 $ aplay -D "sysdefault:CARD=wm8962audio" test.wav

List all sound controls:

 $ amixer controls

Set Speaker Playback volume to max:

 $ amixer cset numid=13 127

Camera Test

Connect an OV5640 camera (PCAM 5C) to J21 on the carrier board.
List capture media devices:

 $ v4l2-ctl --list-devices
 FSL Capture Media Device (platform:42800000.bus:camera):                                                         
        /dev/media0                                                                                              
                                                                                                                 
 mxc-isi-cap (platform:4ae40000.isi:cap_devic):                                                                   
        /dev/video0

Take a single photo:

 $ gst-launch-1.0 v4l2src num-buffers=1 ! jpegenc ! filesink location=test.jpg
 Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...                                                                                   
 Pipeline is live and does not need PREROLL ...                                                                   
 Pipeline is PREROLLED ...                                                                                        
 Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...                                                                                  
 New clock: GstSystemClock                                                                                        
 [  877.427496] mxc-mipi-csi2.0: format: 0x2008                                                                   
 [  877.436706] bypass csc                                                                                        
 [  877.439078] input fmt YUV4                                                                                    
 [  877.441775] output fmt YUYV                                                                                   
 [  877.553965] dwc-mipi-csi2-host 4ae00000.csi: enter enable=1                                                   
 Redistribute latency...                                                                                          
 Got EOS from element "pipeline0".                                                                                
 Execution ended after 0:00:02.375455667                                                                          
 Setting pipeline to NULL ...                                                                                     
 [  879.341902] dwc-mipi-csi2-host 4ae00000.csi: enter enable=0                                                   
 Freeing pipeline ...

See also

• Yocto Linux
• Building Linux Kernel
• Building U-Boot