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BeagleConnect Freedom & Zephyr

Develop for BeagleConnect Freedom with Zephyr

Developing directly in Zephyr will not be ultimately required for end-users who won’t touch the firmware running on BeagleConnect™ Freedom and will instead use the BeagleConnect™ Greybus functionality, but is important for early adopters as well as people looking to extend the functionality of the open source design. If you are one of those people, this is a good place to get started.

Equipment to begin development

There are many options, but let’s get started with one recommended set for the beta users.

Required

  • beta-kit

    • Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green Gateway

    • 3x BeagleConnect™ Freedom board, antenna, U.FL to SMA cable, SMA antenna and USB Type-A to Type-C cable

    • 1x MikroE ID Click

  • microSD card (6GB or larger)

  • microSD card programmer

Optional

  • x86_64 computer running Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS

Install the latest software image for BeagleBone Green Gateway

Download and install the Debian Linux operating system image for the Seeed BeagleBone® Green Gateway host.

  1. Download the special mikroBUS/Greybus BeagleBoard.org Debian image from here. Pick the most recent directory and select the file beginning with bone- and ending with .img.xz. Today that file is bone-debian-11.2-iot-mikrobus-armhf-2022-03-04-4gb.img.xz.

  2. Load this image to a microSD card using a tool like Etcher.

  3. Insert the microSD card into the Green Gateway.

  4. Power BeagleBone Green Gateway via the 12V barrel jack.

#TODO: describe how to know it is working

Log into BeagleBone Green Gateway

These instructions assume an x86_64 computer runing Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS, but any computer can be used to connect to your BeagleBone Green Gateway.

  1. Log onto the Seeed BeagleBone® Green Gateway using ssh.

    • We need IP address, Username, and Password to connect to the device.

    • The default IP for the BeagleBone hardware is 192.168.7.2

    • The default Username is debian & Password is temppwd

    • To connect you can simply type $ ssh debian@192.168.7.2 and when asked for password just type temppwd

    • Congratulations, You are now connected to the device!

  2. Connect to the WiFi

    • Execute sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf and provide the password temppwd to edit the configuration file for the WiFi connection.

    • Now edit the file (shown below) under the network={...} section you can set you ssid (WiFi name) and psk (Wifi Password).

    ctrl_interface=DIR=/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
#country=IN
network={
        ssid="WiFi Name"
        psk="WiFi Password"
}

    • Now save the file with CTRL+O and exit with CTRL+X.

    • Check if the connection is established by executing $ ping 8.8.8.8 you should see something like shown below.

    debian@BeagleBone:~$ ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=118 time=10.5 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=118 time=5.72 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=118 time=6.13 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=118 time=6.11 ms
...

    • If everything goes well, you are ready to update your system and install new applications for beagleconnect.

Note: If you are facing some issue during boot then you can try debugging the boot session with a USB to serial interface cable such as those made by FTDI plugged into J10 with the black wire of the FTDI cable toward the Ethernet connector. Application like tio/minicom/putty can be used to make the connection establishment procedure easy.

TODO: Simplify and elaborate on this section, add boot session debugging walkthrough

Install Zephyr development tools on BeagleBone Green Gateway

  1. Update the system.
    sudo apt update
  2. Install all BeagleConnect™ management software.
    sudo apt install -y \
beagleconnect beagleconnect-msp430 \
git vim \
build-essential \
cmake ninja-build gperf \
ccache dfu-util device-tree-compiler \
make gcc libsdl2-dev \
libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libssl-dev libjpeg62-turbo-dev \
gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi \
libtool-bin pkg-config autoconf automake libusb-1.0-0-dev \
python3-dev python3-pip python3-setuptools python3-tk python3-wheel

    echo "export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin" >> $HOME/.bashrc

    source $HOME/.bashrc
  3. Reboot
    sudo reboot
  4. Install BeagleConnect™ flashing software
    pip3 install -U west
  5. Reboot
    sudo reboot
  6. Download and setup Zephyr for BeagleConnect™
    cd
west init -m https://github.com/jadonk/zephyr --mr bcf-sdk-3.1.0-rebase bcf-zephyr
cd $HOME/bcf-zephyr
west update
west zephyr-export
pip3 install -r zephyr/scripts/requirements-base.txt
echo "export CROSS_COMPILE=/usr/bin/arm-none-eabi-" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "export ZEPHYR_BASE=$HOME/bcf-zephyr/zephyr" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "export PATH=$HOME/bcf-zephyr/zephyr/scripts:$PATH" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "export BOARD=beagleconnect_freedom" >> $HOME/.bashrc
source $HOME/.bashrc

Build applications for BeagleConnect Freedom on BeagleBone Green Gateway

Now you can build various Zephyr applications

  1. Change directory to BeagleConnect Freedom zephyr repository.
    cd $HOME/bcf-zephyr
  2. Build blinky example
  3. TODO
    west build -d build/sensortest zephyr/samples/boards/beagle_bcf/sensortest -- -DOVERLAY_CONFIG=overlay-subghz.conf
  4. TODO
    west build -d build/wpanusb modules/lib/wpanusb_bc -- -DOVERLAY_CONFIG=overlay-subghz.conf
  5. TODO
    west build -d build/bcfserial modules/lib/wpanusb_bc -- -DOVERLAY_CONFIG=overlay-bcfserial.conf -DDTC_OVERLAY_FILE=bcfserial.overlay
  6. TODO
    west build -d build/greybus modules/lib/greybus/samples/subsys/greybus/net -- -DOVERLAY_CONFIG=overlay-802154-subg.conf

Flash applications to BeagleConnect Freedom from BeagleBone Green Gateway

And then you can flash the BeagleConnect Freedom boards over USB

  1. Make sure you are in Zephyr directory
    cd $HOME/bcf-zephyr
  2. Flash Blinky
    cc2538-bsl.py build/blinky

Debug applications over the serial terminal

#TODO#