Technexion PICO-IMX8M

Board Integrations Yocto Project
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Board description

The PICO-IMX8M is a high performance highly integrated PICO Compute Module designed around the NXP i.MX8M Dual/QuadLite/Quad core ARM Cortex-A53 + Cortex-M4applications processor. The PICO-IMX8M provides an ideal building block that easily integrates with a wide range of target markets requiring compact, cost effective with low power consumption.

URL: NXP i.MX8M Quad System-on-Module Cortex-A53 PICO SOM with Yocto, Linux, Android Source code - PICO-IMX8M - TechNexion
Wiki: https://developer.technexion.com/mediawiki/PICO-IMX8M

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:

TODO: Update table below with Yocto Project versions tested & result. Sample data:

Yocto Project Build Runtime
sumo (2.5) :test_works: :test_works: 1

1. Due to the age of U-Boot in this release, ext4 reads are slow and loading the kernel can take upwards of 40 seconds.

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="sumo"

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

mkdir mender-tn-imx-bsp && cd mender-tn-imx-bsp

Initialize the TechNexion BSP repo manifest:

repo init -u https://github.com/TechNexion/tn-imx-yocto-manifest.git -b sumo_4.14.y_GA-stable -m imx-4.14.98-2.0.1_patch.xml

Download amendment manfiest for Mender support:

wget --directory-prefix .repo/local_manifests https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender-community/sumo/meta-mender-tn-imx-bsp/scripts/mender-technexion.xml

Fetch layers in manifest:

repo sync

Setup build environment

Initialize the build environment:

DISTRO=fsl-imx-xwayland MACHINE=pico-imx8mq source tn-setup-mender.sh -b build-xwayland-imx8mq

See TechNexion documentation for all the available configuration options.

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 core-image-base

Replace core-image-base with your desired image target. See TechNexion documentation for all additional image targets and configurations.

Using the build output

After a successful build, the images and build artifacts are placed in tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mq/.

  • build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mq/core-image-base-pico-imx8mq.sdimg
  • build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mq/core-image-base-pico-imx8mq.mender
  • build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mq/imx-boot

imx-boot is the bootloader which needs to be flashed as a separate process when flashing eMMC

The disk image (with .sdimg suffix) is used to provision the device storage for devices without Mender running already. Please proceed to the official documentation on provisioning a new device 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.

Booting from eMMC

The default configuration in the build is configured to boot from eMMC.

Follow the instructions from TechNexion to configure the PICO-PI-IMX8M-MINI board to boot in serial download mode:

Follow the instructions from TechNexion to download the uuu tool:

Flash the eMMC:

sudo ./uuu -b emmc_img \
    build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mq/imx-boot-pico-imx8mq-sd.bin \
    build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mq/core-image-base-pico-imx8mq.sdimg

The result should be the following if it was succesful:

uuu (Universal Update Utility) for nxp imx chips -- libtn-uuu_1.2.91_20190430-0-g82dbda0

Success 1    Failure 0

3:172  6/ 6   [Done                                  ] FB: done

Follow the instructions from TechNexion to boot from eMMC:

Reset the device, and you should have a working Mender integration.

References

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