Board description
TechNexion PICO-PI-IMX8M-MINI evaluation kit blends advanced processing capabilities with sophisticated audio, video, and graphics to deliver low-power and high-performing solutions for embedded consumer and industrial applications.
URL: NXP i.MX8M Mini System-on-Module Cortex-A53 PICO SOM with Yocto, Linux, Android Source code - PICO-IMX8M-MINI - TechNexion
Wiki: https://developer.technexion.com/mediawiki/PICO-IMX8M-MINI
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 (zeus-5.4.24-2.1.0) |  |
|
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
Create a directory for your mender-tn-imx-bsp setup to live in:
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 zeus_5.4.y-next -m imx-5.4.24-2.1.0.xml
Download amendment manfiest for Mender support:
wget --directory-prefix .repo/local_manifests https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender-community/zeus/meta-mender-tn-imx-bsp/scripts/mender-technexion.xml
Fetch layers in manifest:
repo sync -j$(nproc)
Setup build environment
Initialize the build environment:
DISTRO=fsl-imx-xwayland MACHINE=pico-imx8mm source tn-setup-mender.sh -b build-xwayland-imx8mm
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 mode, 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 build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mm/.
build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mm/core-image-base-pico-imx8mm.sdimgbuild/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mm/core-image-base-pico-imx8mm.menderbuild/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mm/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-imx8mm/imx-boot \
build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mm/core-image-base-pico-imx8mm.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.
Booting from SD card
Edit your local.conf to match the following to configure the build to boot from eMMC:
# SD Card
MENDER_STORAGE_DEVICE_pico-imx8mm = "/dev/mmcblk1"
# eMMC Card
#MENDER_STORAGE_DEVICE_pico-imx8mm = "/dev/mmcblk2"
Re-build the image as outlined in previous section. Once the build has completed you can proceed with the next steps.
Follow the instructions from TechNexion to configure the PICO-PI-IMX8M-MINI board to boot from SD:
Write the core-image-base-pico-imx8mm.sdimg image to an SD card, e.g using dd:
NOTE! Be careful! If you point to the wrong <DEVICE> when executing the command below, you risk overwriting your workstationâs local or connected storage devices.
sudo dd if=build/tmp/deploy/images/pico-imx8mm/core-image-base-pico-imx8mm.sdimg of=<DEVICE> bs=4M; sync
Once finished, plug the SD card in to the PICO-PI-IMX8M-MINI board and boot it. You should have a working Mender integration.
References
- The sources of the Yocto integration can be found in meta-mender-community/meta-mender-imx
- The official Mender documentation explains how Mender works. This is simply a board-specific complement to the official documentation.
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