Octavo Systems OSD32MP1-RED on eMMC

Board description

The OSD32MP1-RED board is a development board for the STM32MP1 based SiP, the OSD32MP1.

The OSD32MP1 SiP contains the SoC (STM32MP157C), DDR and PMIC. The electrical connection of these 3 components is rather similar to the STM32MP157C-DK2 and probably other ST development kits too, which make it easy to port this integration to other boards (being mostly a matter of providing a matching device tree).

The main features of this board are:

  • 512M DDR3
  • 1GB eMMC chip
  • ethernet port
  • USB-C connector (which can be used as boot source)
  • DIP switches to select boot source (USB/UART, SD or eMMC)
  • etc.

For more details on this board please visit the OSD32MP1-RED product page

osd32mp1-red-board

This integration currently targets the eMMC as boot media an uses the STM32_Cube_Programmer to flash the eMMC while the the board is set to USB/UART boot mode.

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
kirkstone (4.0) :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. For U-Boot-based boards, the integration checklist has been verified.

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="kirkstone"

Create a directory for your mender-octavo-osd32mp setup to live in and clone the
meta information.

mkdir mender-octavo-osd32mp && cd mender-octavo-osd32mp

Initialize repo manifest:

repo init -u https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender-community \
           -m meta-mender-octavo-osd32mp/scripts/manifest-octavo-osd32mp.xml \
           -b ${BRANCH}

Fetch layers in manifest:

repo sync

Setup build environment

Initialize the build environment:

source setup-environment octavo-osd32mp

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 st-image-core

Replace st-image-core with your desired image target.

Using the build output

After a successful build, the images and build artifacts are placed in tmp-glibc/deploy/images/osd32mp1-emmc-mender/.

The built artefacts are comprised of several files and are meant to be flashed using the STM32_Cube_Programmer tool. Please see the references below for more information on how to install and run the tool.

To flash the board’s eMMC using the built artefacts:

  1. Set all the board DIP switches to the OFF position
  2. Attach the board to the computer using a USB-C cable
  3. (Optional) Attach a serial adapter (TTL levels) to the debug header on the board
  4. Run the STM32_Cube_Programmer
cd tmp-glibc/deploy/images/osd32mp1-emmc-mender
STM32_Programmer_CLI -c port=usb1 -w flashlayout_st-image-core/trusted/FlashLayout_emmc_stm32mp157c-osd32mp1-red-trusted.tsv

Finally, to boot the newly flashed image, set the DIP switch #2 to ON and reset the board.

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 Artefact 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

Known issues

  • This build was tested on an OSD32MP1-RED v1.1. The v1.2 board uses a different ethernet PHY connection and will likely require a different device tree to bring up the interface.
  • For some reason, core-image-minimal lacks the devicetree in the /boot directory. I might find the problem and provide a solution in the future.
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