CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

October 4, 2011January 18, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

Xibo Digital Signage on ARM (Beagleboard / Overo)

Xibo (pronounced eX-E-bO) is an open source, multi-display, multi-zone, fully scheduled digital signage solution written in Python (there is also a dotnet version). This is a client /server solution that can run on Windows or Linux. If you are not familiar with Xibo you can visit http://xibo.org.uk/ or/and read my introduction XIBO: An Open Source Digital Signage Server/Client. Since I had not seen digital signage solution running on low cost ARM development platform such as Beagleboard, Pandaboard or Origen, I decided to give the Xibo python client a try using qemu to emulate Gumstix Overo COM (OMAP 3530). Porting Xibo to ARM could provide several benefits compared to x86 platform: Lower hardware cost Lower power consumption (and electricity bill) Smaller form factor allowing easier integration in displays and in transportation (e.g. buses, subway trains). Easier to implement new digital signage features such as touch screen support, 3G connectivity, location based […]

October 4, 2011October 4, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Android Developer Conference: DroidCon 2011 Schedule

DroidCon UK will be held for two days (October 6th & 7th 2011) at the Islington Design Center in London and boasts to be United Kingdom’s largest Android-only developer conference. Here’s the program for day 1 (6th of October): 9:00 Barcamp Talks will be selected by attended among the following proposals: From Publisher to Platform – the role of OpenSource in engaging with developers by Oscar Clark, Papaya Mobile. Reality of Mobile Advertising by Terence Eden, Inmobi. OpenGLES2 & Android QEMU Emulator by Jonathan White and Jose Commins, Accenture. Enhancing User Experience with HTC: 3D, Pen, and Audio Lance Nanek, HTC. Cisco Workshop by Marcus O’Sullivan, Cisco. OpenGL & NDK by Ashraf Hegab, Orange. Fed up with trying to make pay per download pay back? Try API revenue share by James Parton, o2. (Re)Branding Headache? Here’s your Pain Killer by Joana Cruz e Costa, Masabi. Smooth and User Friendly UI […]

October 4, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 11.09 Release with Linux Kernel 3.0.4

Linaro has just released version 11.09 based on Linux Kernel 3.0.4. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Ethernet Configuration Manager from the x86 Android project is now available in all builds. Ethernet now works on Panda, Staging Panda, Beagle, Beagle xM, Staging Snowball. QA on all boards for the 11.09 Linaro Android Builds. Daily builds of Android toolchain against gcc-linaro bzr repository is provided. Android is now compiled with GCC4.6 with -O3. Busybox is built from source in all Android builds. glmark2 added to all the official builds for Android. Powertop is now available on Android. Linaro’s 11.09 toolchain has been benchmarked. All Android builds are running with the 11.09 toolchain. The MLO that Panda and Staging Panda uses for Android uses gets built from source from the upstream git. An OMAP4460 Android build is available from android-build. Panda supports Bluetooth. Panda supports Wi-Fi. Snowball Android A-release from […]

October 3, 2011October 20, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Cross Compiling libavg for ARM

libavg is a high-level development platform for media-centric applications using Python as scripting language and written in C++. Bear in mind that are many dependencies with libavg 1.6. I have not built all the libraries required, but instead simply taken the pre-built binaries and header files in the qemu overo image and copied the files as follows: mkdir mnt sudo mount -o loop,offset=$[106496*512] overo_sd_alip.img mnt mkdir ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib -p mkdir ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/include cp mnt/usr/lib/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/ -rf -d cp mnt/lib/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/ -rf -d cp /mnt/usr/include/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/include -rf -d sudo umount mnt The -d flag skips the symlink, so we need to recreate then for all library so that the compiler can find libname.so instead of libname.so.12. Save the following scripts to symlinks.sh:

#!/bin/sh
liblist=`ls *.so.??`
for f in $liblist
do
  echo $f
  fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{2\}$//'`
  ln -s $f $fileres
done
liblist=`ls *.so.?`
for f in $liblist
do
  echo $f
  fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{1\}$//'`
  ln -s $f $fileres
done

#!/bin/sh

liblist=`ls *.so.??`

for f in $liblist

echo $f

fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{2\}$//'`

ln -s $f $fileres

done

liblist=`ls *.so.?`

for f in $liblist

echo $f

fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{1\}$//'`

ln -s $f $fileres

done

and run it where the arm libraries are located (in my case in /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib, /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi and /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/mesa). This will create symlinks for most libraries, but not all. Some will still […]

October 3, 2011October 20, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Cross-Compiling Mesa 3D Graphics Library for ARM

Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification that can be used for software emulation or complete hardware acceleration for modern GPUs.The Mesa library is used by a variety of games (e.g. Quake 2.3), libraries (e.g PyOpenGL), science and technical applications and utilities (e.g. xscreensaver). MesaLib requires X11 libraries. I’ll assume those are already cross-compiled here. For this build, I used pre-built X11 libraries found in ALIP (ARM Internet Platform) binaries. I used the method described here and copied the libs in /lib and /usr/lib and header files in /lib/include found in the qemu overo image respectively to /home/jaufranc/edeve/beagleboard/libs/lib and /home/jaufranc/edeve/beagleboard/libs/include. make sure you use the “-d” with cp to avoid copying the symlinks or some symbolic links would point to x86 binaries or files that do not exist. Here are the instructions to cross-compile MesaLib 7.11 for ARM using arm-linux-guneabi-gcc: Download the latest version of Mesa source code: […]

October 3, 2011August 15, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Cross Compiling Boost C++ Libraries for ARM

Boost provides free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries. Ten Boost libraries are already included in the C++ Standards Committee’s Library Technical Report and will be in the new C++11 Standard. The Boost C++ libraries are already included in popular Linux and Unix distributions such as Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and NetBSD and are used by projects such as Python, Xibo, Civilization IV, etc.. Here are the steps to cross-compile Boost C++ libraries for arm using arm-linux-guneabi-g++: Download the source code:

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.47.0/boost_1_47_0.tar.bz2/download

1	wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.47.0/boost_1_47_0.tar.bz2/download

Extract the source code:

mv download boost.tar.bz2
tar xjvf boost.tar.bz2
cd boost_1_47_0/

mv download boost.tar.bz2

tar xjvf boost.tar.bz2

cd boost_1_47_0/

Bootstrap the code:

./bootstrap.sh

1	./bootstrap.sh

Modify the configuration file (project-build.jam) to use the ARM toolchain by replacing the line with “using gcc” by:

using gcc : arm : arm-linux-gnueabi-g++ ;

1	using gcc : arm : arm-linux-gnueabi-g++ ;

Install the python development package:

sudo apt-get install python-dev

1	sudo apt-get install python-dev

Build and install the boost libraries:

./bjam install toolset=gcc-arm --prefix=~/edev/beagleboard/libs --disable-long-double -sNO_ZLIB=1 -sNO_BZIP2=1

1	./bjam install toolset=gcc-arm --prefix=~/edev/beagleboard/libs --disable-long-double -sNO_ZLIB=1 -sNO_BZIP2=1

This was tested in Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) and 10.04 LTS with linaro g++ toolchain.

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

October 2, 2011June 28, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

How to Transfer files between the Host and Qemu via SSH and NFS

Last week, I wrote a blog post explaining how to copy files to a qemu image by mounting the qemu image in the host. This is only useful if emulated platform does not support networking. If networking is enabled, using SSH (Secure Shell) or NFS (Network File System) is more convenient. Using SSH with Qemu To initiate the SSH connection from qemu, there is actually nothing extra to do as long as you have sshd installed and running on the host. If it is not installed simply run sudo apt-get install openssh-shell on the host. This will install and automatically sshd. To initiate the SSH connection from the host, you’ll have to redirect the ssh port to an unknown port and start qemu as follow (for overo):

sudo qemu-system-arm -M overo -m 256 -drive file=./overo_sd_alip.img,if=sd,cache=writeback -clock unix -serial stdio -device usb-kbd -device usb-mouse -redir tcp:2222::22

1	sudo qemu-system-arm -M overo -m 256 -drive file=./overo_sd_alip.img,if=sd,cache=writeback -clock unix -serial stdio -device usb-kbd -device usb-mouse -redir tcp:2222::22

Please refer to Beagleboard Emulator in Ubuntu with Qemu for the detailed instructions on how to setup qemu to emulate beagleboard or […]

October 1, 2011July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2 Tablets Are Now Available

This week Amazon announced the Kindle Fire and got a lot of press coverage for its 199 USD Android Tablet. But the Kindle Fire was not the only low cost Tablets made available this week as Arnova G2 Tablet are also available in the US. Archos Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2, respectively with a 7″ and 10″ capacitive display, are powered by a Rockchip RK2918 Cortex A8 processor clocked a 1Ghz, 512 MB SDRAM, 4 to 8 GB flash memory, a microSD slot and run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system. Arnova 10 G2 also have a 0.3MP front facing camera for video conference. Arnova 7 G2 can be pre-ordered on Amazon for 199.99 USD. Anrvoa 10 G2 can be purchased on Tigerdirect Ebay store for 199.99 USD. Last week, you could also get it for 99 USD with a newspaper subscription. Like the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Arnova G2 […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products