OpenOCD: Hardware Debugging and More – ELCE 2012

Peter Stuge, self-employed hardware, software and security consultant, talks about OpenOCD open source tool for JTAG debugging at ELCE 2012 in Barcelona. Abstract: The presentation walks through how to use the OpenOCD open source software to debug embedded systems on the hardware level via JTAG interface, allowing single stepping, setting breakpoints, inspecting register and memory contents and more, starting before the CPU even executes the first instruction. After an introduction to JTAG debugging we look at how to use OpenOCD both standalone for firmware flashing as well as together with the GDB GNU Debugger for convenient debugging of bootloaders or the Linux kernel. These tasks will be demonstrated, and the respective OpenOCD configuration details will be explained.The presentation targets intermediate-level developers who work on bootloaders, BSPs and kernel drivers, deeply embedded systems, and test and production engineers with an interest in using OpenOCD, which can allow unified tooling across all […]

F2FS – A New Flash File System for Mobile Devices – ELCE 2012

Joo-Young Hwang, principal engineer at Samsung, presents F2FS (Flash-Friendly File System), a new file system designed for storage in mobile devices at the Embedded Linux Conference in Barcelona, Spain, on November 5, 2012. Abstract: Recent mobile devices adopt various flash storages as a primary storage. File system support for those flash storages is a must for flash device performance and lifespan. I will present a new file system, called F2FS, designed for mobile flash storages. F2FS is designed considering the characteristics of the underlying flash storage which has flash translation layer (FTL). F2FS outperforms EXT4, which is a popular file system for Android phones, in most of benchmarks. I will describe motivation, design, and implementation of the file system, then show performance comparison data with EXT4. Target audiences are those who are interested in file system support for flash storages such as eMMC and SSD. Kernel and file system expertise […]

Modular Graphics on Embedded ARM – ELCE 2012

Philipp Zabel, kernel developer at Pengutronix, discusses about graphics and video support for Linux on embedded SoCs at Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2012. Abstract: Porting Linux to new ARM based application processors has recently become easier than ever: the kernel gained many new frameworks like common-clock, oftree and pinmux. However, things get complicated when it comes to high end embedded graphics units.Those graphics systems tend to be composed of a multitude of on-SoC functional blocks that can operate on shared graphics buffers and video signals, as well as off-SoC encoder/converter chips that can be mixed and matched with any SoC.The old framebuffer is certainly not enough for today’s hardware any more, while modern frameworks like KMS and DRM have their own hassles on non-PC style graphics systems.The talk outlines issues we found while working on graphics and video support for the MX53 and MX6 CPUs and gives suggestions for possible […]

Embedded Linux Boot Time Optimizations – ELCE 2012

Alexandre Belloni, embedded Linux engineer and trainer at Adeneo Embedded, gives a presentation about different techniques to optimize boot time for Embedded Linux at ELCE 2012. He also explains how they’ve measured the boot time. Abstract: A common problem faced when embedding Linux is the long boot time before the system is functional. There are many ways to improve boot up time. For a particular project, we had to answer a CAN message from Linux userspace in less than 420 ms from going out of CPU reset. We will describe our methodology and the techniques we finally chose to implement in that particular use case. We will also detail how we measured the boot time efficiently. A live demo will show the results of our work. More specifically, Alexandre discusses two projects at Adeneo where boot time was critical: An automotive platform based on Freescale i.mx53 needs to reply to […]

Near Field Communication with Linux – ELCE 2012

Samuel Otiz, software engineer at the Intel Open Source Technology Center, talks about NFC support for Linux at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe in , on November 5, 2012. Abstract: Linux recently gained support for NFC (Neard Field Communication), and this presentation will describe the status of the current NFC stack in terms of actual features, hardware support and also distribution availability.After showing how this stack is architectured, we will also explain what our long and short term plans are. NFC hardware is typically found on mobile devices, many of them running Linux or Android. Up until recently, only Android provided a real and viable software support for those chipsets. During this presentation I will show how the Linux NFC stack is now getting on par with the Android stack features and API wise and how its design allows for an already broader range of supported chipsets. The presentation is divided into  […]

$14 Marstek MPR-N9 WiFi/3G Router with 2,400 mAh Battery

One of my readers (Onebir) brought Poray M3 mini Router to my attention a few days ago, as it just cost $17 at the time (now over $20) and OpenWRT developer Squonk seems very interested about it since it features microSD and SD card slots missing in TL-WR703N. However, the device only has 16 MB memory which makes it somewhat difficult to run OpenWRT, or at least some of its features. But today, I’m not going to talk about this. Mentions of Poray M3 router came in HAME MPR-A1 OpenWRT forum thread, and I discovered a new (to me) type of low cost, small form factor device: portable Wi-Fi/3G routers. Those devices are about the size of android mini-PC and contain the chips to handle Wi-Fi, USB host (for external 3G dongle), and comes with a built-in battery so that you can use them anywhere (beach, mountain, car…), as long […]

Etnaviv Project Vivante GCxxx GPU Open Source Driver

You have most probably heard of Lima, an initiative to provide fully open source Mali-200 & Mali-400 drivers by reverse-engineering the closed source Mali GPU drivers. A separate effort, Etnaviv Project, has now started to offer open source drivers for Vivante GCxxx GPU used in SoC such as Marvell Armada 1500 (notably used in mainly Google TV platforms), Rockchip RK2918 (present in many older tablets),  Freescale i.MX6 (used in newer tablets, low cost development boards, some SoMs and GK802/Hi802 mini PCs). The project is called Etnaviv. The introduction of Etnaviv Project reads as follows on the corresponding Github account: Project Etnaviv is an attempt to make an open source user-space driver for the Vivante GCxxx series of embedded GPUs. The current state of the project is experimental. It is currently only of use to developers interested in helping develop open source drivers for the hardware, reverse engineering, or in interfacing […]

Crystalfontz CFA-10036 ARM9 Embedded Module Running Linux 3.7

Crystalfontz America, a supplier of LCD and OLED display modules used in embedded systems, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund manufacturing and lower the cost of a system-on-module powered by Freescale i.MX28 featuring a small 128×32 OLED display, and lots of GPIOs. Here are the specs of CFA-10036 SoM: Processor – Freescale i.MX283 @ 454MHz  (Optionally i.MX287) System Memory – 128 MB DDR2 (Optionally 256MB) Storage – microSD socket (Up to 64GB) Interfaces: 2x CAN interfaces 4x synchronous serial ports 10/100-Mbps 802.3 Ethernet MAC USB 2.0 OTG (connected to microUSB AB on CFA-10036. Used for development purpose) USB 2.0 host controller and PHY 5x UART plus one dedicated debug UART 2x I2C (OLED shares one of these) LCD, touch screen, keypad, and rotary encoder support RTC with 32KHz crystal (requires continuous power) 4x 32-bit timers 8x PWM 5x 12-bit 428KS/s ADC channels 1x 12 bit 2MS/s ADC channel 91 GPIO […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design