RoadTest: Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained
Author: astro27
Creation date:
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?: raspberry pi, beaglebone black
What were the biggest problems encountered?: very less support documentation and assistance for windows, was not able to install demo lcd image due to not being able to install sam ba in system programmer by atmel
Detailed Review:
Thankyou for selecting me for the roadtest. I received the product on 24 september.
Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained
This evaluation kit is a fast prototyping and low cost evaluation platform for Atmel’s
SAMA5D3 ARM® Cortex®-A5 processor-based microprocessor design. It comes with
a free of charge Linux distribution including Linux Kernel 3.10 (LTS), Linux Mainline
and Yocto 1.5.1 support. Bare metal developers benefit from a complete C software
package including many examples to get started fast. The board is also a perfect
development platform for headless Android.
The board comes with a rich set of ready to use connectivity and storage peripherals
and expansion headers for easy customization. A USB device connector can be used
to power the board as well as programming and debugging it.
The kit contains a board and a usb cable for programming the board.
Features :
SAMA5D36 Cortex-A5 Microprocessor
• 256MBytes DDR2
• 256MBytes NAND Flash
• LCD connectors
• Dual Ethernet (GMAC + EMAC) with PHY and connectors
• Three USB connectors (2 Host + 1 Device)
• 1x SD/eMMC and 1x MicroSD slots
• Expansions headers, Arduino R3 Shield compatible
• Power measurement straps
As i was new to yocto, i preferred searching for another linux system. After days of research i came at the emdebian image for the board. As i was doing all this on windows so it became hard to find resources for the board. But at last i got an image for the embedded linux. It was easy and fast to prepare and boot the board using the image.
Steps :
2..Insert the SD card into your SD card reader and check what drive letter it was assigned.
3.Download the Win32DiskImager utility
4.Install or extract (depend on file type you chose) the executable from the zip file and run the Win32DiskImager utility
5.Select the image file you extracted above and select the drive letter of the SD card in the device box.
6.Click Write and wait for the write to complete.
7.Power off SAMA5D3 Xplained board and insert SD card into SAMA5D3 Xplained board SD card socket
8.Power on SAMA5D3 Xplained board
Root login:
Username: root
Password: root
User login:
Username: xplained
Password: xplained
After the power on the board asks for the user login details. Then i installed the usb utility lsusb through :
apt-get install usbutils
I then installed Lxde desktop environment on the board :
apt-get install task-lxde-desktop
exec startlxde
The details of the installation are given here : https://wiki.debian.org/LXDE
But sadly I was not able to see the desktop environment on the given lcd. I tried to install sam-ba in system programmer from atmel to flash the demo patches but was not able to do so. So i installed tightvncserver on the board. The steps are :
1.First refresh the software repository information using
sudo apt-get update
This is particularly important if you have just installed the operating system as the repository information may be incomplete.
2.Install the server software from the repositories:
sudo apt-get install tightvncserver
3.The first time you run the server it will prompt you to set a password. This is the password that you use when connecting remotely.
/usr/bin/tightvncserver
There is no need to create a view only password, unless you have a specific need.
4.When the server starts it will tell you which virtual desktop has been setup. In this case:
New 'X' desktop is raspberrypi:1
says that it's virtual desktop 1. You would connect to this using :1 at the end of the IP address in the client, this is the one we will setup to start automatically later.
5. Next download and install tightvncviewer on your laptop. It can be downloaded from here http://www.tightvnc.com/download.php
6. Open tightvncviewer and give the ip address assigned to the board and the port number. The ip address can be found from the terminal command ifconfig.
7.Type in the password you set in the step 3 and you should be seeing the desktop environment.
I was able to use the gpios and the i2c as i do in raspbian. The i2c can be accessed using https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-4-gpio-setup/configuring-i2c
and gpios through http://falsinsoft.blogspot.in/2012/11/access-gpio-from-linux-user-space.html.
Conclusion :
SAMA5D3 Xplained
Pros :
cons:
