Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained, Add-On Boards + LCD Bundle - Review

Table of contents

RoadTest: Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained, Add-On Boards + LCD Bundle

Author: matfur92

Creation date: 20 Oct 2014

Evaluation Type: Evaluation Boards

Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True

What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?:

What were the biggest problems encountered?: There is no step by step guide to make it easy for a first use of a person who has never picked up a board like that. There isn't a clear set of development programs (IDE) or step-by-step guide that I can use to take advantage of the qualities of fast development described by the advertise. In the box there isn't a FTDI USB To TTL Serial Converter to debug and have access to U-Boot.

Detailed Review:

INDEX OF REVIEW

1. FIRST BOOT
2. FLASHING A DEMO
3. USE WI-FI DONGLE
4. UNBOXING  (at the end because there are lots of photos)
   1. Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained
   2. Arduino UNO click shield
   3. Sensor Click Board
   4. Wifi Dongle
   5. LCD8000

First Boot

1. I connected to the LCD board. To do this I had to use Ex-LCD Expansion Board interposing between board and LCD paying attention to the direction of the connector as in the picture.

2. I connected the USB cable provided.

3. I connected the board to the PC, so this made the boot (see blue LED).

4. I used a program to read data from the serial port, it can also be the very simple Arduino, using the following parameters:

          Baud rate    115200

          On                8 bits

          Parity            None

          Stop              1 bit

          Flow control  None

5. At this point, once you start the connection I find myself having to enter the login details -> "root" as the user and <Enter Key> for the password

6. FINE - at this point I have available the classic shell linux with whom I can interact and perform some commands like those listed below to obtain more information on the board

Show kernel version and system architecture

root@sama5d3_xplained:/# uname -a

Linux sama5d3_xplained 3.10.0-yocto-standard #1 Wed Feb 5 10:03:20 CET 2014 armv7l GNU/Linux

Show name and version of distribution

root@sama5d3_xplained:/# head -n1 /etc/issue

Poky (Yocto Project Reference Distro) 1.5.1 \n \l

Show RAM total seen by the system

root@sama5d3_xplained:/# grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo

MemTotal:        252852 kB

Show CPU(s) info

root@sama5d3_xplained:/# cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor      : 0

model name      : ARMv7 Processor rev 1 (v7l)

BogoMIPS        : 351.43

Features        : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee vfpv3 vfpv3d16 tls vfpv4

CPU implementer : 0x41

CPU architecture: 7

CPU variant    : 0x0

CPU part        : 0xc05

CPU revision    : 1

Hardware        : Atmel SAMA5 (Device Tree)

Revision        : 0000

Serial          : 0000000000000000

Flashing a demo

To flash a new demo, I used the guide at the following link: http://www.at91.com/linux4sam/bin/view/Linux4SAM/GettingStarted_xplained

1. I have installed the SAM-BA from http://www.atmel.com/tools/ATMELSAM-BAIN-SYSTEMPROGRAMMER.aspx

2. I have download and unpack the demo from ftp://www.at91.com/pub/demo/linux4sam_4.3/linux4sam-poky-sama5d3_xplained-4.3.zip

3. Open JP5 to disable NAND Flash memory access

4. Press BP2 reset button to boot from on-chip Boot ROM

5. Close JP5 to enable NAND Flash memory access

6. (I was on windows) I placed the folder you just unzipped and I started the script for flashing "demo_linux_nandflash_pda4.bat"

7. When the logfile.log appears (this will take a few minutes), check that = Done. = is written at the end of the file.

8. Press BP2 reset button to boot on NAND Flash memory and launch the demo

9. To test the LCD screen with a random image use  root@sama5d3_xplained:~# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fb0 bs=128k 

Using linux4sam-poky-qte-sama5d3_xplained-4.4 ( ftp://ftp.linux4sam.org/pub/demo/linux4sam_4.4/linux4sam-poky-qte-sama5d3_xplained-4.4.zip )

With this release, the LCD screen has this message at boot but the touch screen does not work I present the crosshair

Use Wi-Fi Dongle (with demo OS)

1. Plugged in the wi-fi dongle into an USB

2. In the shell entered this command wpa_passphrase yourSSIDname yourWifiPassphrase  to get the password of wifi network in hex

3. Copy the hex code

4. In the shell vi  /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and modify the document like this for example

network={

        ssid="ASUS"

        #psk="yourWifiPassphrase"

        psk=01c8ef9624574a397bca73525e87e8fd8bf695f46e88b44efca01b09ea42ce5a

}

5. Restart the network using /etc/init.d/networking restart

6. Verify the network using iwconfig 

wlan0    IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"ASUS"

          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 10:BF:48:D3:72:50

          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s  Tx-Power=20 dBm

          Retry  long limit:7  RTS thr:off  Fragment thr:off

          Encryption key:off

          Power Management:on

          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-15 dBm

          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

          Tx excessive retries:19  Invalid misc:4  Missed beacon:0

Unboxing

UNBOXING - Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained:

UNBOXING - Arduino UNO click shield:

UNBOXING - Sensor Click Board

UNBOXING - Wifi Dongle

UNBOXING - LCD8000