Enjoy!

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of posts I outlined the attempts I have made at using U-Boot to control the booting of the pcDuino. Specifically, I have been trying to configure the second stage boot to be from my SD card instead of the on board NAND flash. Unfortunately, the U-Boot implementation as installed does not allow persistent setting of the environment for boot from an alternative interface. And the installed U-Boot does not support the newer boot.scr or uEnv.txt extensions. The newer U-Boot versions available on linux-sunxi are not compatible with the pcDuino. I also tried the fw_printenv and fw_setenv U-Boot tools, but they only work with /dev/mtdX NAND configurations. I was not able to find a ready made solution, so I had to roll my own. Read more…

In Part 1 I described connecting to the pcDuino serial port and accessing the U-Boot subsystem. With this access to the boot environment, the task of booting to a root file system other than the NAND flash looked promising. Read more…

This evening I decided it was time to check out the boot loader and boot command options on the pcDuino. To access the serial port on the J5 debug port I used a Sparkfun FTDI Basic Breakout-3.3v — a simple to use logic level serial to USB interface. With the power off and the FTDI Basic disconnected from the computer, I connected the serial lines and ground.

Read more…

One of the things I had noted earlier was that the HDMI output resolution is fixed at 720p (1280×720) and there was no documented way of setting a new resolution. There was a posting in the comments at Sparkfun that a script for setting the resolution was being worked on. Well, I decided to take a look at it myself and see what was required. It is actually quite simple once you have the right tools. With a little research, I had my display running at 1080p (1920×1080). Read more…

Today I connected up a my prototype board for an I2C experiment with the pcDuino. Blinky Lights!

YouTube video of simple I2C parallel port test using Python. Read more…

Finally some time to get my new pcDuino set up. Connected a USB keyboard, USB mouse to the USB ports. Plugged in to my network, connected the monitor to the HDMI port, and applied power. Green LED and nothing… Then, about 20 seconds later, the monitor showed a LXDE desktop. I reread the documentation and saw the statement that there is no display on the monitor until the boot process completes. I was used to all my other Linux systems (Raspberry Pi included) that display output the boot messages to the default display while starting up. Read more…

My pcDuino was deliverd while I was at work. I came home this evening to find the distinctive Sparkfun red box waiting for me. I could not wait to confirm that everything had arrived. Opening the box revealed the packing list, packing materials, and an anti-static bag with the pcDuino inside… That’s it! The pcDuino was just begging to be removed, connected, and powered on… And I had to go out to dinner with the family. Later.

I was browsing the Sparkfun web site this week and saw they had added the pcDuino as a new product. At $59USD this looked to be an excellent addition to my ARM based small development boards that run a “real” OS. The pcDuino comes preloaded with Ubuntu Linux and also supports Android. Read more…