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Using Raspberry Pi as an Internet Kiosk

Following up on this morning post explaining how to get the kernel and minimal rootfs to run debian in qemu emulating an ARM1176 processor, I’ll show how to make a minimal rootfs to run Chrome browser in this platform. I tested it in QEMU, but this should also run on the Raspberry Pi hardware. First, you’ll have to complete the step I provided in Raspberry Pi Emulator in Ubuntu with Qemu. Start qemu: sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -cpu arm1176 -m 256 -hda rootfs.ext2 -kernel zImage -append “root=/dev/sda” -serial stdio Once you login to the console as root, create a new user (e.g guest): adduser guest This user will be needed to login with the graphical interface and ssh. In order to get an Internet Kiosk, we’ll need a web browser (Chromium) and a window manger. I chose fluxbox instead of gnome because of the size difference (8651 KB vs 1739 […]

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Archos 80/101 G9 Firmware Version 3.2.56 Released

Archos has just released a new firmware for Archos 80 G9 / 101 G9. Here’s the changelog: Version 3.2.56 – October 14th, 2011  Android browser: add support for new browsing modes in settings (using various tablet/desktop user agents) Network shares: improve browsing behavior robustness and mounting reliability Memory management: reduce time for an application to load Wi-Fi: achieve faster reconnect Wi-Fi: fix mobile access point support Accessories: add support for some USB Ethernet adapters (chipsets: RTL8150, ASIX AX88xxx, Davicom DM9601, SMSC LAN75xx, SMSC LAN95xx, NetChip 1080, MosChip MCS7830) on micro USB port Video: fix sound being lost sometimes while playing and need to seek/play/pause to recover it Filebrowser: make it usable with Archos remote application Battery: apply less intrusive low battery warnings Keyboard: no need to reboot to apply keyboard layout The firmware can be downloaded at http://update.archos.com/9/gen9/gen9_3.2.56/firmware_archos_it4.aos

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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Raspberry Pi Emulator in Ubuntu with Qemu

The Raspberry Pi board is a low cost board based on Broadcom BCM2835 media processor SoC with an ARM1176JZF-S core clocked at 700MHz. This board is currently under development and should be ready by end of November, beginning of December and will be sold for 25 USD (128MB RAM – no Ethernet) and 35 USD (256MB RAM – Ethernet). While we are waiting for the board, we can still test software using qemu to emulate a board based on an ARM1176 core with 128MB or 256 MB memory. I’ve tried to create a rootfs based on Ubuntu with rootstock but this only support processors with ARM cortex A8 and greater, so it would not work with ARM11. I’ll be using Debian Squeeze instead. Prerequisites My host computer is running Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS, but any recent Ubuntu or Debian installation should work with these instructions. [Update: You won’t be able to […]

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Cross-compiling Berkelium (and Chromium) for ARM

Berkelium is a BSD licensed library that provides off-screen browser rendering via Google’s open source Chromium web browser. It takes advantage of Chromium’s multiprocess rendering to isolate browsers from each other and can render to any buffer in memory. The user of the library can inject input and javascript code into web pages to control them, as well as listen for events generated by the page such as navigation events, load sequence events and paint events. Berkelium provides a small API for embedding a fully functional browser into any application. This library is used by Xibo Digital Signage Player python client. I’ll give the instructions I followed to build Berkelium and Chromium for ARM. For now the build works, but I have a problem running berkelium in the emulator. First, you’ll need to install some tools and the development version of some libraries: sudo apt-get install git-core subversion cmake doxygen […]

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Variscite System On Module based on TI OMAP4460

Variscite – an Israeli company specialized in embedded systems manufacturing, development and consulting – announced the VAR-SOM-OM44 system on module (SOM) based on TI OMAP4460 processor (dual core Cortex-A9 cores @ 1.2 ~ 1.5GHz). This SOM features 512MB of DDR2 SDRAM and a microSD socket, I/O including gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, 3D camera, and HDMI. Variscite also announced  the VAR-OM44CustomBoard, a development board that can be customized to match specific customers requirement as well as the VAR-DVK-OM44, a complete development kit with touchscreen for evaluation and application development purposes. Here are the VAR-SOM-OM44 SOM specifications: CPU: Texas Instruments OMAP4460 Processor (1.2GHz – 1.5GHz) dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore GPU: PowerVR™ SGX540 graphics core @384MHz Memory: 512-1024MB 400MHz LPDDR2 Built-In micro-SD Socket Display: LCD interface – Supporting 24bpp resolutions up to WXGA HDMI interface – Supporting 1080p 4-wire touch screen panel interface Audio: Line-in Stereo Headphone out Digital microphone S/PDIF Out Network: 10/100/1000Mbps […]

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Generate a Custom ARM Rootfs Easily with Rootstock

You may need to generate your own rootfs for your ARM target board, but do not want to cross-compile all libraries manually. You can achieve this with rootstock, a utility that generates Ubuntu armel rootfs tarballs and/or qemu image, to be uncompressed onto a root device. First install roostock: sudo apt-get install rootstock Then generate a rootfs with the required libraries: sudo rootstock –fqdn beagleboard –login cnxsoft –password temppasswd \ –imagesize 3G –seed xfce4,gdm,pkg-config,python,perl,g++,bison,flex,\ gperf,libnss3-dev,libgtk2.0-dev,libnspr4-0d,libasound2-dev,libnspr4-dev,\ libgconf2-dev,libcairo2-dev,libdbus-1-dev,libstdc++6-4.5-dev,libexpat1-dev,\ libxslt1-dev,libxml2-dev,libbz2-dev  –dist natty Here are the details of the command line parameters: –fqdn: Hostname to be used for the target system –login: Login ID of the admin user created during setup –password: Password of the admin user created during setup –imagesize: Size of the target filesystem to be created (default 1GB) –seed: List of packages to install –dist: Specify Release to build (jaunty, karmic, lucid, maverick or natty) Alternatively you could also use an […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011

Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELC-E 2011) will take place on October 26 – 28, 2011 at Clarion Congress Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. The event will be co-located with LinuxCon Europe 2011 and GStreamer Conference. The day before the official opening of the conference, two tutorials will be offered on Tuesday 25th of October:b Outside the Box: An Introduction to Embedded Linux and Hardware Interfacing Using the Snowball Board – 9:00 – 17:00 – Trainer: Chris Simmonds – Cost: 350 USD. Embedded Android Workshop – 9:00 – 17:00 – Trainer: Karim Yaghmour- Cost: 300 USD. ELCE consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting. October 26 10:45 – 11:45 – Linaro’s Android Platform by Zach Pfeffer, Linaro Android Platform team leader. Linaro uses components from the Android Open Source […]

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Dropbear: Lightweight SSH Server / Client

You may need to remotely access your embedded device, or your embedded systems is simply headless. You could use telnet, but this is insecure. A secure way to access a device remotly is to use SSH protocol. OpenSSH is one implementation but this is relatively too large and may use uncesary space on a device with limited storage. That’s where Dropbear comes into play. Dropbear is a lightweight implementation of an SSH client and server and is ideal for embedded systems. Dropbear ARM executable is only 200 KB. Here’s how it’s described on its website: Dropbear is a relatively small SSH 2 server and client. It runs on a variety of POSIX-based platforms. Dropbear is open source software, distributed under a MIT-style license. Dropbear is particularly useful for “embedded”-type Linux (or other Unix) systems, such as wireless routers. The main features of dropbear: A small memory footprint suitable for memory-constrained […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications