Embedded Artists iMX8M Quad COM

Board Integrations Yocto Project
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Board description

Embedded Artists iMX8M Quad COM Developer’s Kit lets you get up-and-running quickly with NXP’s i.MX 8M application processor. All relevant interfaces are available either for prototyping or direct integration into your product.

imx8mq_com_kit_v2
imx8mq_com_kit_v21024×674 400 KB

Product URL: iMX8M Quad Developer’s Kit
Documentation: OTA updates using Mender on EA boards

Test results

The Yocto Project releases in the table below have been tested by the Mender community. Please update it if you have tested this integration on other Yocto Project releases:

Yocto Project Build Runtime
zeus (ea-5.4.24) :test_works: :test_works:
sumo (ea-4.14.98) :test_works: :test_works:

Build Means that the Yocto Project build using this Mender integration completes without errors and outputs images.
Runtime Means that Mender has been verified to work on the board.

Getting started

Prerequisites

  • A supported Linux distribution and dependencies installed on your workstation/laptop as described in the Yocto Mega Manual
    • NOTE. Instructions depend on which Yocto version you intend to use.
  • Google repo tool installed and in your PATH.

Configuring the build

Setup Yocto environment

Set the Yocto Project branch you are building for:

# set to your branch, make sure it is supported (see table above)
export BRANCH="ea-5.4.24"

Create a directory for your mender-ea setup to live in and clone the
meta information.

mkdir mender-ea && cd mender-ea

Initialize repo manifest:

repo init -u https://github.com/embeddedartists/ea-yocto-base \
           -m ea-mender.xml \
           -b ${BRANCH}

Fetch layers in manifest:

repo sync

Setup build environment

Initialize the build environment:

DISTRO=fsl-imx-wayland MACHINE=imx8mqea-com source ea-setup-mender.sh -b build_dir

Configure Mender server URL (optional)

This section is not required for a successful build but images that are generated by default are only suitable for usage with the Mender client in Standalone deployments, due to lack of server configuration.

You can edit the conf/local.conf file to provide your Mender server configuration, ensuring the generated images and Mender Artifacts are connecting to the Mender server that you are using. There should already be a commented section in the generated conf/local.conf file and you can simply uncomment the relevant configuration options and assign appropriate values to them.

Build for Hosted Mender:

# To get your tenant token:
#    - log in to https://hosted.mender.io
#    - click your email at the top right and then "My organization"
#    - press the "COPY TO CLIPBOARD"
#    - assign content of clipboard to MENDER_TENANT_TOKEN
#
MENDER_SERVER_URL = "https://hosted.mender.io"
MENDER_TENANT_TOKEN = "<copy token here>"

Building the image

You can now proceed with building an image:

bitbake ea-image-base

Using the build output

After a successful build, the images and build artifacts are placed in tmp/deploy/images/imx8mqea-com/.

The disk image (with .sdimg suffix) is used to provision the device storage for devices without Mender running already. Please read Embedded Artists documentation found in the references list below for steps to do this .

On the other hand, if you already have Mender running on your device and want to deploy a rootfs update using this build, you should use the Mender Artifact files, which have .mender suffix. You can either deploy this Artifact in managed mode with the Mender server (upload it under Releases in the server UI) or by using the Mender client standalone mode.

References