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Pi as developing board for ARM9 board and how to start my project

e14 Contributor

Hello,

 

I'm the new one here. My name is Ulrich in the outside world I'm a communication engineer in Finland. I'm having basic knowledge of Linux from doing school assignments which was always fun. Had also an ubuntu machine ones - unfortunately I had no time to play as much with as I wanted..

 

First I have to say that I'm sorry for asking here and taking your valueable time because I know that there are thousands of people asking for the same advice every day. I'm really willing to study myself, I just would like to have some guideliness for my project since I've no experience with embedded Linux. I read the book "Embedded Linux Development Using Eclipse" which was very good to get some basic information.

 

My project is based on an AT91SAM9G20 processor which should run an Angstrom Linux. The device should work as a fieldbus (KNX) coupler. There is going to be a webserver to see status and control the device. 

The reason why I am asking here, in the Raspberry Pi forum, is that I would like to know if I could use the Raspberry Pi as development board for this project since the final board is not available yet. Of course I couldn't connect it to the KNX but I think this is only a smaller part of the project anyways since I'm going to use ready made libraries there. I would like to know if I could easily transport the code (and knowledge) from Raspberry Pi to the final board. I guess this shouldn't be a problem if I could run the same OS on both of them?.. I have to admit that I'm a little bit confused and overwhelmed with all the different Linux software/plugins/packages etc. available.

Therefore I would appreciate it a lot if I could get some guideliness, or maybe a book recommondation, or maybe somebody could give me a link to similar project -  that would be great.

 

Thank you!

Ulrich

  • in reply to guzunty

    @Derek: Thank you for the interesting information. It's always great to hear what other people used in their projects. But I have one question concerning remote debugging with eclipse: There is going to be a JTAG connector on the board, however could I also simply use ethernet which is available too? I'm just confused because I saw a tutorial using this evaluation board and eclipse and they used JTAG instead of ethernet as you described.

     

    @jamodio: image

  • in reply to e14 Contributor

    You can use ethernet to connect to a gdb session running in the target. This is fine as long as the target systems kernel is running smoothly etc.

     

    However, using JTAG you have full control over the processor and can single step even down into the kernel. Although this is often not viable in the context of a running system, it does save a lot of time when otherwise you'd have to rely on printk and a rebuild.

     

    Even if you aren't planning on doing kernel work, I'd still recommend investing in a JTAG debugger, because they are now low enough cost that you can regard it as 'insurance', especially if you are embarking on a commercial design. I cut my embedded teeth on Intel ICE equipment which was $20k. OCD adaptors are just pocket change compared to that and they work pretty much as well.

     

    Just my 2c.

  • in reply to guzunty

    Hi Derek,

     

    thank you for clarification. I ordered a JTAG debugger with the board. I'm looking forward to start developing on the board.

    Thank you all for your help!

     

    Ulrich