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

Table of contents

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

Author: peteroakes

Creation date: 10 Nov 2014

Evaluation Type: Independent Products

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?: RiOT Board

What were the biggest problems encountered?: Lack of product readiness. Included parts where unable to be tested due to lack of built in support. LCD was not supported out of the box or even after following numerous instructions available . Documentation to leverage additional IO devices beyond basic digital I/O was unavailable

Detailed Review:

Where to begin

To quote the Atmel web site

The SAMA5D3 Xplained is a fast prototyping and evaluation platform for microprocessor-based design. The board comes with a rich set of ready to use connectivity and storage peripherals and expansion headers for easy customization. A Linux distribution and software package gets you evaluating fast. A USB device connector can be used to power the board as well as programming and debugging it.

Key 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

The LCD Provided was a 4.3" 480*272 resolution display with resistive touch screen (Image was from my RiOT board... sorry to get your hopes up

Additional components, Temp and humidity Sensor, USB W IFI Dongle and a click adapter

This look like an excellent board, Powerful, Arduino Compatible,  A Linux OS, Dual Ethernet and LCD support built in, well yes the chip has the support but the provided distro does not, no console drivers for the LCD and no touch screen support either. so we were all (The Reviewers) left trying to figure out how to make things work, somewhere fortunate to have some deeper Linux experience and therefore were able to get some basic I/O working but only digital, and Greg Fenton managed to get graphics up on the LCD display but not as part of the console. It was only offering a basic frame buffer (/dev/fb0) and he has been working to improve on that

so in summary:

I was very impressed with the potential of this board, as far as loading images and having the basic LINUX up and running it was pretty straight forward.

What spoiled the experience was the lack of complete images with drivers already loaded for evaluation, this board is not advertised as a "Here is a board, now figure out how to get it working", It was my expectation based on the literature to be more like a Raspberry PI where the basics are there and it is up to the evaluator to adapt to his or her project, try out he capabilities and basically adapt to get a custom project up and running.

From that perspective I was very disappointed. the choice of a bare bones Yocto Polkey distro was in my opinion a bad move. There is so much support and knowledge for Debian in the form of Raspbian especially that  had the choice be different this could have gained a huge following from the PI, BBB and Arduino camps, instead as it stands this board will for most, end up in the bottom drawer gathering dust.

Atmel and E14 / Embest, please please pull it together and provide a core that is ready to go, just add imagination with ADC, LCD etc all built in. to expect the purchaser to have to compile kernels and spend hours or days just trying to get the basics up and running and for most... failing before they can get to grips with their own project is just plain bad. and just as important, most of us do not run LINUX workstations or have a clue about compiling kernels, don't make us do that and provide better support for windows as a loading mechanism (AKA ready built images and perhaps a menu to select the one the user wants. This is an evaluation board, I wanted to evaluate it, not learn how to build an OS

Now for the detailed "Review" (Lab notes on my lengthy attempt to get the board up to a usable level which to me was having the LCD and Touch up and running, then getting add ons going.)

Before I start, I would like to thanks all the other SAMA5D3 reviewers for the group support they provided, I think at the end of the day it was a team effort to get as much working as we did, I dont think anyone was able to get it to the level we expected it to arrive in but nevertheless it was a great and rewarding experience working with you all and sharing your work to help the rest of us.

Getting the basic GPIO working was straight forward after a little research it proved to be a straightforward export function as with most eval boards (BBB, PI, RiOT etc, AKA basic Linux file system integration

So as an example:

echo 8 > /sys/class/gpio/export results in pioA8 
echo 24 > /sys/class/gpio/export results in pioA24 
echo 32 > /sys/class/gpio/export results in pioB0 
echo 48 > /sys/class/gpio/export results in pioB16 
echo 64 > /sys/class/gpio/export results in pioC0
echo 96 > /sys/class/gpio/export results in pioD0
            

With that your now able to toggle IO pins or read them.

Here is a link that provided some clarification and help http://falsinsoft.blogspot.in/2012/11/access-gpio-from-linux-user-space.html

But still no analogue, SPI, I2C etc. Time for more research.... Many evenings of searching, scouring the planet for the elusive na Rare document that may shed light on this conundrum...

So I discovered several images that may work but they were still POLKEY

I Uploaded V4.4 (Latest for SAMA5D3) and could get the LCD to respond but only basic Frame Buffer stuff, no real interactive console, no APT-GET , GIT or anything else useful, you need a Linux workstation and familiarity with compiling the OS build which I do not have.

then I uploaded 4.6 (for the SAMA5D4), during power up this actually displayed splash screen on the LCD but then promptly crashed probably due to incompatible evaluation board but it does show the board will talk to the LCD with the right drivers that appear to be on the SAMA5D4 image but not the SAMA5D3

So now after getting really frustrated with Polkey I started looking for a more familiar Debian distro if possible.

With astro27 hard work I was able to get Debian up and running which is enabled for a lot more functionality, image from here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uo7fwrnpji6aoqc/DxYTGeXWGg

the first thing noted was the image on the SD card was only 2GB so refering to my experiance with the RiOT board I tried the same approach with this, it worked like a charm, now I have a full 16GB SD card, plenty of room for other libraries and apps.

Extend File system to fit SD Card

this is how I did it:

follow the instructions here:

http://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/single-board-computers/riotboard/blog/2014/06/13/debian-on-riotboard--after-basic-install-adding-a-gui-desktop

adjust for the fact it will be using /dev/mmcblk0p2 (Delete the existing one, then add in the new with the same name and using partition 2 for delete and re-create the partition accepting the new defaults as described in my RiOT post.

Adding USB Drivers and a few other fixes was fairly simple as astro27  had that covered already

apt-get install usbutils

now add a few more for time zone and clock support:

apt-get install ntp

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata  to adjust the time-zone

Basic X Windows using lxde

apt-get install task-lxde-desktop

exec startlxde

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

/usr/bin/tightvncserver

Provide a password… but not for the view mode, no need

Load onto windows the TightVNC client from here http://www.tightvnc.com/download.php

Login with tightvncViewer and wait a few seconds… Voila, we now have remote X Window, a welcome sight

Now to add a few of my own favourites

sudo apt-get install geany  (Programming UI)

sudo apt-get install vim

sudo apt-get install curl

and MQTT from this link:

http://jpmens.net/2013/09/01/installing-mosquitto-on-a-raspberry-pi/

curl -O http://repo.mosquitto.org/debian/mosquitto-repo.gpg.key

sudo apt-key add mosquitto-repo.gpg.key

rm mosquitto-repo.gpg.key

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

sudo curl -O http://repo.mosquitto.org/debian/mosquitto-repo.list

sudo apt-get update

  sudo apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients python-mosquitto

the above now results in MQTT server and the client to be installed with python support, running the test apps worked like a charm locally and over the connected network.

See mosquitto_sub and mosquitto_pub with the base documentation here: Documentation | Mosquitto

Now to try get the LCD up and running again

NOTE: you need to be able to connect to the DEBUG serial interface on the board to make this work as you need to interrupt the boot process and access the UBOOT menu

trying to interpret instructions contained in the SAMA5D3_xplained LCD-EX Quick Guide_V1.2.pdf (Attached) also proved fruitless, primarily because they where talking the reader through compiling a new kernel, not exactly something I was expecting to do as the only Linux machines I own are the embedded ones. There where no instruction for adding the drivers from within the Woking image or a completed image for uploading from windows with the driver included. this would have made things so much easier for the reviewers.

following the instructions provided in the LCD manual it says to enter the following command

setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 init=/init nosmp video=mxcfb0:dev=lcd,7inch_LCD,if=RGB565 video=mxcfb1:off fbmem=10M malloc=400M androidboot.console=ttymxc1 androidboot.hardware=freescale calibration

which proves to be incorrect as we have a 4.3" display and as expected it did not work, it should have been the following

setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 init=/init nosmp video=mxcfb0:dev=lcd,4.3inch_LCD,if=RGB565 video=mxcfb1:off fbmem=10M malloc=400M androidboot.console=ttymxc1 androidboot.hardware=freescale calibration

but again this did not work, I did later discover that you also need to include the resolution but that still did not prove fruitful on the SAMA5D3 so time to try it on the RIOT board as the LCD manual claims it is compatible there too

RiOT Board the the 4.3" LCD Display

first thing first, find an image that will work with the LCD and RiOT board, not all the links in the document attached worked so I had to find an alternate source

I found this for Ubuntu, not quite what I was looking for but close enough http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1854297.pdf

The site for downloads and instructions I found that worked here: RIoTboard Development Platform

The guide I selected was this one (Part way down the page, linking to a drop box

• RIoTboard LCD8000-43T Quick Start Guide

I attached it for reference

following almost an identical process as used for the SAMA5D3 board to modify the environment variables there still where not quite right, and defaulted to the wrong screen resolution

the corrected line is this

setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 init=/init nosmp video=mxcfb0:dev=lcd,4.3inch_LCD,480x272M,if=RGB565 video=mxcfb1:off fbmem=10M vmalloc=400M androidboot.console=ttymxc1 androidboot.hardware=freescale calibration

rebooting back to LINUX I was amazed to see the system boot up onto the LCD as the main console.. YAAAAAA

for reference, here are the other environmental settings for different screens

setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 init=/init nosmp video=mxcfb0:dev=hdmi,1280x720M@60,bpp=32 video=mxcfb1:off fbmem=10M vmalloc=400M androidboot.console=ttymxc1 androidboot.hardware=freescale

setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 init=/init nosmp video=mxcfb0:dev=ldb,bpp=32 video=mxcfb1:off fbmem=10M vmalloc=400M androidboot.console=ttymxc1 androidboot.hardware=freescale

setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 init=/init nosmp video=mxcfb0:dev=lcd,7inch_LCD,if=RGB565 video=mxcfb1:off fbmem=10M vmalloc=400M androidboot.console=ttymxc1 androidboot.hardware=freescale calibration

setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 init=/init nosmp video=mxcfb0:dev=lcd,4.3inch_LCD,480x272M,if=RGB565 video=mxcfb1:off fbmem=10M vmalloc=400M androidboot.console=ttymxc1 androidboot.hardware=freescale calibration

now run the commands to get the screen and touch working better

sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-tslib libts-bin

the second command failed but there was a backup plan so I followed it using the link

• ubuntu-touchscreen

on the same page as the image link was provided above

get touch screen stuff from here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/49x7sjyj64ok8in/AABpGvyZ7aoIEX93zD61vzo1a?dl=0  as indicated by this web site http://www.embest-tech.com/shop/star/riotboard.html

A few more steps and hopefully it will all be over

extract content, place on usb then,...

mount USB

dpkg -i xserver-xorg-input-tslib_0.0.6-7_armel.deb

TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/event0

TSLIB_CONFFILE=/etc/ts.conf

export TSLIB_TSDEVICE TSLIB_CONFFILE

ts_calibrate

the calibration screen appeared on the LCD.. this is good, but unfortunately it did not recognise the touch chip and would not respond to touch events so that was it.

only one more thing to try, upgrade UBUNTU as it was complaining it was out of date

after several hours of painful waiting it was done but not without errors, and now the calibrate would not work correctly

So after that little bit of work, the LCD screen now is used during boot and as a console, following the next instructions for the touch screen though still proved useless but atleast I had the LCD running on an Embedded Linux machine, Ill take the small win where I can. Now if only the OS made the icons and screens small enough to be usable for UBUNTU XDE, ah well, cant win them all