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Reviving RIoT Board

gsgill112 — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 14:45:40 GMT

Hi,

So, Like me many of us might have old SBC or powerful computers available at our disposal, but doe to the ever speeding pace of software development, often many of these kits die down due to lack of software support. An example is the RIoT Board, originally debuted around 2012-13 ( don't quote me on that) and post takeover of Freescale by NXP, died a peaceful death by around 2015-16. :( ;

let's keep silence for 1 min .......

Well now that's out of the way, So,

The board https://uk.farnell.com/freescale-riotboard/ , https://slowbootkernelhacks.blogspot.com/2017/01/riot-board-based-on-freescale-imx-6solo.html?m=0, https://community.nxp.com/t5/i-MX-Processors-Knowledge-Base/Task-2-First-build/ta-p/1112763, /products/devtools/single-board-computers/riotboard/#pifragment-3624=3, http://freescale.github.io/#

is not bad at all, I mean it is at par with Beagle Bone Black Rev C and Raspberry Pi 3 B, even better in some regards,

It features,

NXP i.MX6Solo ARM Cortex-A9 processor @ 1Ghz
1Gbps Ethernet
1GByte of 32-bit wide DDR3 @ 800MHz
4GByte EMMC Flash, Full size SD and Micro SD card support
Supports Android and GNU/Linux
EMC Compliance - Class B certified
4 USB 2.0 Ports
Raspberry Pi Compatible headers
On board Serial port for debugging
On board JTAG interface
NXP Power Management Integrated Chip (PMIC MMPF0100) fully programmable, and unto 5V/ 3A Input power support
OpenGL® ES 2.0 3D graphics accelerator with a shader

So, Not at all shabby. IN FACT, absolutely perfect for a 2 TB RAID 0 NAS using old laptop 1 TB hard disks (0.6A)

BUT, IT IS NOT SUPPORTED ANYMORE !!!!! and I could even speak to the Ubuntu repos of on board 11.10 builds.

I tried the blogs already present and compiled 10 different roots, u-Boot and Linux kernel, etc and have just given UP. to update to a slightly recent linux version but to be true that is not my area of expertise.

So Need help of your brilliant minds to help me revive this kit and maybe give HOPE to old SBC's :)

side NOTE, could learn a ton of things :)

RE: Reviving RIoT Board

vinicius.vbf — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 23:05:51 GMT

I just updated my RIoTboard to run Debian 12 with the images from this GitHub repository:
https://github.com/yjdwbj/imx6-riotboard

Worked like a charm!!
Now I'm off to bring the OpenSDA interface back to life on Win 11...

RE: Reviving RIoT Board

gsgill112 — Fri, 31 May 2024 20:20:41 GMT

Interested can you please help with adding support to this board

RE: Reviving RIoT Board

espozuno — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 22:20:39 GMT

I got a few of these RiotBoards and I can not seem to load any of the MfgTool files into the eMMC. I constantly get this error when formatting

UTP: executing "mkfs.msdos -F 32 /dev/mmcblk0p1"
mkfs.msdos: /dev/mmcblk0p1: No such file or directory
UTP: sending Non-success to kernel for command $ mkfs.msdos -F 32 /dev/mmcblk0p1.
utp_poll: exit with status 256

If I look at the /dev/mmcblk0p1 directory It gives me End 0+, MiB 15-, #blocks 16-, Id 16064+, c, System W95 FAT32 (LBA)

does anyone know why this happens? Thanks

RE: Reviving RIoT Board

szempy — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 15:38:29 GMT

I would like to bring back to life my riotboard with some new linux as well.

Kali on RIoTBoard....its possible?

epsylon67 — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:03:55 GMT

Did someone managed to install Kali <<https://images.offensive-security.com/arm-images/kali-2017.3-riot.img.xz>> on RIoTBoard?

I followed the instructions from <<https://docs.kali.org/kali-on-arm/kali-linux-riotboard>>, and tried all methods to write on SD card but no success to boot in... [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/95/contentimage_5F00_53.png:16:16]

Some help for a newbie would be appreciate!

Thanks!

PS: Link from Kali download area is invisible so if u want to download image follow above link.

RE: Kali on RIoTBoard....its possible?

szempy — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 13:19:10 GMT

So you mean this one: https://github.com/buildroot/buildroot

Well i tried to build it but i only get a 4.8 MB rootfs.tar file in the image folder.

Do you have maybe a config file to get a working linux to the board? Or some information on what i should do to make it work?

RE: Kali on RIoTBoard....its possible?

szempy — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 11:39:21 GMT

I did try to build it but failed: gitlab.com/.../312

RE: Kali on RIoTBoard....its possible?

PascalEngel — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 19:17:50 GMT

The instruction link is broken (404).

Have you set the boot jumpers to boot from SD-Card? And did you use the SD-Card slot, not the µSD Slot?

If you want to use your Riotboard otherwise:
it is possible to build a current Kernel 6.3 and GCC 12 and also a current U-Boot with the buildroot master branch.

RE: Kali on RIoTBoard....its possible?

szempy — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 10:35:56 GMT

I suppose you don't have this files because i can't rebuild it.

RE: Reviving RIoT Board

belush — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 20:29:05 GMT

Hi, after being forgotten in a box for years, I took out my RIoT board during the lockdown in managed to get Debian 10 running on it (after Centos and Fedora, which also worked but not 100%).

Not using it for anything in particular at the moment, but it was just fun to get it working.

If still interested I can post some tips when I have some time...

RE: hdmi not ready error

thomas1029 — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 10:20:01 GMT

Blu-ray players, gaming consoles, and smart TVs all use HDMI cables to send high-definition video and audio to a TV or monitor. An "HDMI error unable to display video" error message may appear when an HDMI cable is not functioning properly.
Gaming consoles and televisions can be connected using the industry-standard HDMI visual connector. There are numerous causes for it, including issues with the HDMI cable, the device's inability to recognize the HDMI signal, or the device's HDMI port.

hdmi not ready error

arunmagesh — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:48:58 GMT

hello, i just installed linaro on my board. its connected to my monitor by hdmi,

i enabled the hdmi in cmd mode too. but it posts error like hdmi no ready in serial debug.

RE: How can i create an image of my linux configuration and flash it into emcc

jiapei100 — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 20:17:17 GMT

In my case:

➜ ~ df -h
Filesystem      Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mmcblk0p1   28G   18G 8.8G 67% /
none             16G     0   16G   0% /dev
tmpfs            16G   88K   16G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs            16G   31M   16G   1% /run
tmpfs           5.0M 4.0K 5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs            16G     0   16G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           3.2G   12K 3.2G   1% /run/user/120
tmpfs           3.2G 116K 3.2G   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/mmcblk1p1   29G   29G     0 100% /media/lvision/AGX-SD

And I got the following No space left on device ERROR

➜ ~ sudo dd bs=1024 if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/mmcblk1
[sudo] password for lvision:
dd: error writing '/dev/mmcblk1': No space left on device
30318593+0 records in
30318592+0 records out
31046238208 bytes (31 GB, 29 GiB) copied, 4605.66 s, 6.7 MB/s

while I tried to dd mmcblk0 which is ONLY used 18G to mmcblk1 which is of 29G size.

How can i create an image of my linux configuration and flash it into emcc

e14 Contributor — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 17:54:55 GMT

I want to copy the same configuration on more riotboards. How can i handle this with the emcc-flash not the sd-card?.

RE: Linux flashing, no device connected under Windows XP

epsylon67 — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 12:09:39 GMT

Thanks Nitin...this was the correct answer for me, I managed to connect Mfgtool trough USB only when I extracted SDcard before power up and then reinserted if for flash.

RIoTboard always starts in recovery mode!

rj.natraj@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 06:37:13 GMT

I started working on RIoTBoard recently for learning purpose. My develop environment is Ubuntu 18 and I'm trying to follow the steps mentioned in this link.

When I try to boot the board with SD card or uSD card, with correct boot config switch, it always boot in recovery mode. Meaning, when the board is powered up, no message seen in serial console. And the 'lsusb' command shows this entry "Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. i.MX6Q SystemOnChip in RecoveryMode". Boot from eMMC works fine, no issues. Does anyone has any clue what is happening on this board?

Riotboard doesn't recognize Wi-Pi

jorgerito — Thu, 31 May 2018 18:04:39 GMT

Hi, I have a Riotboard with Ubuntu booted from an SD card, I been trying to use a wifi connection with the Wi-Pi module but it doesn't work.

When I plug it in and run the lsusb command on terminal it shows this:

Bus 002 Device 008 ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp.

I tried doing some configurations to the file /etc/network/interfaces but it does nothing.

It would be great if somebody could help me. I'm new on Linux

RE: Riotboard doesn't recognize Wi-Pi

stmorgan — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:06:17 GMT

You might want to see Tushar Panda's post on this topic:

https://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/single-board-computers/riotboard/blog/2015/01/27/setup-mediatek-rt5370-wifi-on-riotboard-ubuntu-platform

The Wi-Fi dongle described in that post uses the same Ralink RT5370 chip/chipset.

Erich Styger's post on using the Wi-Pi with RIoTboard under Android may also be useful if you want to test that Wi-Pi is actually functional:

https://mcuoneclipse.com/2014/07/24/adding-the-wi-pi-wifi-dongle-to-the-riot-android-board/

I found out a week ago that it is possible for a Wi-Pi to be damaged but still appear to function in some respects. When using the Wi-Pi as part of an ADS-B receiver, we had a series of very strong thunderstorms pass through the area. I managed to shut the system's Raspberry Pi 2 MCU down, but only after we had several lightning strikes within a mile/couple of kilometers. I started the receiver up after the storm, and the Wi-Pi dongle made a connection to the router and was successfully assigned an IP address, but it is apparently damaged in such a way that it will no longer pass data. If I substitute an identical Wi-Pi in the system and restart it, it works just fine. So can use an Android RIoTboard image to test that your Wi-Pi dongle is fully functional if you have doubts on that topic.

Good luck.

RE: Riotboard doesn't recognize Wi-Pi

jj57 — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 08:51:58 GMT

The driver may have been compiled for a previous kernel version of Ubuntu.

If so, you may find these instruction helpful for recompiling it:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/457061/ralink-mt7601u-148f7601-wi-fi-adapter-installation?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=…

RE: Ubuntu 14.04

davinder — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 06:19:44 GMT

how can I update 11.10 to 14.04 or latest ?

Do you have any RIOTboard linux images with GUI ?

Tried Yocto it has no GUI and ubuntu versionn is too old to use

RE: Ubuntu 14.04

davinder — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 06:09:35 GMT

Can anyone upload or give link to ubuntu 14.04 or latest image for Riotboard ?

Do you still support Riot Board?

ismailkose — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 19:57:51 GMT

Hello,

I am planning to purchase more than 10. But, I am not sure if this product is still supported and will manufactured. We will need more later on to give some ours customers.

I do not see recent updates and also some of the necessary accessories are already out of stock such as LVDS display, serial to usb converter. There is 14 of riot board in the stock.

It seems like it has been not updated for long time.

Are you planning to manufacture further Riot boards?

I need many IMX6 based development boards that will have long term support, if there are better alternatives please let me know.

Thanks

RE: Do you still support Riot Board?

gsgill112 — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 05:09:33 GMT

RIoT Board is quite old and Has a Rather Narrow or almost non Existent Community. If you are interested in IMX6 Solution, I would suggest Having a look at WandBoard,

https://www.wandboard.org/

You can also go through NXP as they also offer some neat Dev Boards, Which may solve your purpose.

Regards,

GS Gill

internet connection

nandhish — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 10:00:05 GMT

HI the riot board is not connecting to internet .I used both wi-fi dongle and ethernet connection and also i configured edit connection.