Tag Archives: imx6

XBMC development for i.MX6 : A new organization

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Intro

As you know, I have been working on XBMC iMX6 support for a few months.
Last week, a major contribution was submitted by Chris (Koying) to enable rendering using Vivante direct texture extensions.
It was the opportunity to discuss how we could organize to upstream the imx6 support and a new way of working has just been defined.

New way of working

First of all, following Chris advice, I have created a github organization xbmc-imx6.
Please note that this account is now the place where i.MX6 development effort for XBMC will take place.
It aims at easing developers collaboration and at preparing a pull request on XBMC main repository to add official support.

Here are a few guidelines (which have been discussed here)

  • The branch master-pr will be the one which is ready for the “final” PR in XBMC main repository. This branch will be rebased vs xbmc master and it will be kept in sync with local master once a week.
  • The branch master will hold the current state of the art of this imx6 version : It will not be rebased against xbmc master but required changes (spotted while rebasing master-pr) will be merged.
    These 2 branches may seem weird at first sight : it is a way to keep a branch (master) that can be used for packaging (as git hashes will be stable on this one) and another one (master-pr) which is always ready for a PR in xbmc main repo.
  • In this imx6 repository developers can have their own branch but there is absolutely no guaranty about the content and stability of these branches. So, it is highly discouraged to build them or to directly cherry pick commits.
  • Locally, all commits into master are subject to a PR :
    • PR requires at least a review/comment from another developer before being merged. Exceptions are trivial fixes such as : comments fixes, cosmetics changes, very simple fixes that are urgently required to stabilize master branch (ie guard against NULL pointer).
    • I will have to confirm any major PR : Anything that changes the current logic or adds a new functionality.
    • A 24hours delay after the last comment will always be observed before closing a PR to deal with different TZ and availability of the members
  • At last, in xbmc-imx6 account, the issues will be the favorite place
    • to discuss new feature to be implemented (and assign job to prevent work duplication)
    • to exchange regarding this iMX6 development
    • to report bugs (if any lol)

Last but not least, everyone is welcome and any contributions will be very appreciated…

Conclusion

I am very happy with this change and I thank warmly Chris and Jan who are already very active to bring this i.MX6 version to a state that will allow upstreaming…

Yet another yocto image

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Introduction

I am pleased to announce that a new yocto based image (v0.0.4) with my newest XBMC for iMX6 is now available.
I would like to thanks all people who helped me to improve the current state of XBMC.
This image is an update of the previous one and is built in a similar way (Thanks to yocto dora)
Note that this image is rather for advanced users who want to give a try at the current state of XBMC for iMX6. Many users will prefer other well packaged distros like geeXboX or openelec.

The image is currently available for the following devices :

  • Wandboard Dual and Quad
  • Utilite : I have a pro model but it may work on other variants (untested for now)
  • udoo Dual and Quad

What’s new

This image packages XBMC Gotham Alpha 11 (12/31/2013) with my specific changes for iMX6.
The biggest changes compared to the previous one are :

  • Full liveTV support (with support for hardware deinterlacing)
  • Solve issues with some videos which were jerky
  • The “noise” on SPDIF is worked around
  • Kernel configuration also enablse many new options and drivers (especially most DVB USB drivers)

Resources

Here are the files :

Installation

I have updated the website to provide direct access to frequently used instructions.
For installation, you can refer to this page (It is also available in the menu header->howto->installation)

Also for liveTV, note that all XBMC clients are packaged.

If you want to plug a tuner on your target itself, most kernel USB DVD drivers are available.
Firmwares are not available by default in the Root FileSystem but the command :

get_dvb_firmware

will enable to download firmware for common devices..

tvheadend is running but you have to configure it a first time. To do so :

killall tvheadend
tvheadend -C

Then connect to you web interface : http://yourip:9981

Known issues

  • Some interlaced H264 1080p streams @50fps or @60fps are not played smoothly
  • HDMI passthrough for HD audio does not work
  • lirc is not properly configured to function properly “out of the box”
    Yet everything is available if you have a working driver (the driver for cheap IR receiver is available in wandboard image)
    You can launch lircd that way :
lircd -d /dev/lirc0 /etc/lircd.conf –output=/dev/lircd

And then xbmc that way,

/imx6/xbmc/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin -l /dev/lircd

At last, the Smart packages updater has a few issues in this release :
If the update command

smart update

does not work in spite of working internet connection, then, issue the following commands :

rm -rf /var/lib/smart/
smart channel --add wolf_repo type=rpm-md baseurl=http://www.stephan-rafin.net/rpmhf2

For obscure reasons, smart is fooled in thinking that some basics packages are not installed (while they are ) and fails when it tries to reinstall them…
As a workaround, when you install a package, use the stepped option :

smart install --stepped your_package

and refuse installation of already installed packages…

Bugs Report

I have created a forum to discuss issues.
Please use it instead of comments as it should be more appropriate…

Conclusion

Lots of work has been addressed since the previous version.
I hope you will be able to witness the improvements and to enjoy liveTV.
Please understand that I cannot dedicate too much time for the packaging itself as I still have to focus on XBMC development and improvement…

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First look at Matrix TBS2910

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Intro

A few weeks ago, I received from TBS technologies their new Matrix tbs2910 device

The hardware device

It is iMX6Q device derived from the SabreSD board with nice specifications.
Of course, we find common features for an iMX6Q device such as :

  • 2GiB RAM
  • HDMI output
  • 1Gbps wired Ethernet (in fact limited to 400mbps as any other iMX6 device)
  • wifi 802.11n/b/g
  • sdcard slot
  • Analog audio output
  • 3 USB 2.0 slots
  • 1 USB OTG
  • RS232 (optional with additional adaptation board)

But it also exhibits a few, less common, interfaces :

  • mini PCIe slot
  • TF card slot
  • optical SPDIF (with TOSLINK connector)
  • SATA interface (including power connector)

Last but not least : A 16GiB eMMC is embedded.
This approach differs from most alternatives and their sdcard slots only solutions…

It is also worth mentioning that the HDMI CEC signal is properly wired and functional.

The device is packaged in a acrylic case which looks a little… Hmm well I guess you should have look at the pictures and make your own mind (Click on the picture tab)
There are also a few buttons (power, vol up and down) that are not so useful to be honest : But after all they could be bounded to other activities with a few changes…

At last the most worrying item is a fan !
Why the hell should we add a fan on a iMX6 device ? Of course heat dissipation can become a concern especially with the Quad variant and its GPU but I really think most ARM users just don’t want active cooling and that’s it…

Software

The embedded eMMC can be programmed through the USB OTG port with freescale MfgTool2 tool, a user friendly but windows only utility.
TBS distributes several images on sourceforge :

  • An Android image
  • An ubuntu image
  • A MatrixTV image

I will mainly speak about the matrixTV as it is the one I have tried and I know about.
This image is built using the openbricks build system and the relevant source is again available on sourceforge.
This image packages my XBMC port along with useful programs for liveTV (especially VDR and tvheadend).
It even supports out of the box the TBS tuners (TBS5922, TBS5980, TBS5925, TBS5680, TBS DVB-C sticks, TBS5220, TBS5880,TBS5881) with a configuration program to setup everything at first boot.
That way, I have been able to have a smooth experience with my DVB-T TBS5880 tuner at first try (well at second try to be perfectly honest because there was a little mismatch between the dvb-c and dvb-t kernels at some time. But it is now something of the past…)

The developers seem to be pretty active and to listen to users feedback.
After my grunts about the fan which is quite loud, they quickly implemented an automatic regulation that really mitigates the issue as the fan will almost never run while using XBMC (only a few seconds if you heavily use the GUI but not during playback for sure)
They have also integrated in their kernel Rene driver to give access to a cheap IR receiver (It is easy to connect a TSOP on the header available at the corner of the board)

To get an idea about how it behaves, you can have a look at these videos posted by an user (piotras) on the XBMC forums :

Conclusion

At the end, it can definitively be an attractive iMX6 device with specific features and a team which wants to provide a good experience out of the box.
As I guess many users wonder which iMX6 devices they should buy, I will try to post an article which compares the ones I own (I currently have 7 different boards/devices) to help with this choice.
I will also post a similar article for the cubox-i4 as soon as I can as I have recently received a sample from solidrun and it is a very good device…

New XBMC yocto image

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Introduction

I am pleased to announce that a new yocto based image (v0.0.3) with my newest XBMC for iMX6 is now available.
This is a Yocto image based upon the dora version (V1.5).
This image takes advantage of the great work from freescale community while adding my own layer for most XBMC related stuff.
Today this release is available for the following devices :

  • Wandboard Dual and Quad
  • Utilite : I have a pro model but it may work on other variants (untested for now)

What’s in it

Basically, this image packages XBMC Gotham Alpha 9 with :

  • iMX6 hw accelerated decoding (VPU) for most standard formats
  • iMX CEC support (for utilite only as wandboards are not properly wired)
  • WIFI configuration thanks to network manager addon
  • Support for HDMI/SPDIF/Analog sound outputs (including passthrough for HDMI and SPDIF)
  • SMB/NFS/uPNP network shares and other standard XBMC features

It is a ARMHF build with 3.0.35_4.1.0 kernel.

Compared to my previous images, it tries to provide better support for developers :

  • Native compilation (gcc and standard dev libraries already installed)
  • Cross compilation (Full SDK provided)
  • Straightforward way to fully rebuild the yocto distro

It also solves some bugs found in the previous images :

  • The transiant black screens are gone
  • The Jump backward and Fast Backward Fast Forward are now OK
  • Many videos are now perfectly smooth and no frame drop occurs (except when the GUI is being opened)
  • Some bugs related to the main XBMC Gotham alpha are fixed in this updated alpha 9 version

Resources

The following sdcard images are available :

  • Wandboard Quad (md5sum f913b2d586e96f8ddaa0d1014720abba)
  • Wandboard Dual (md5sum cc39390ee87de8b8ef806604a79c410a)
  • utilite (md5sum 6a3dae479cccedeae63d692f32cdaba2) (Was updated on 11/20 to solve boot issue some users were faced with)

You can also download :

  • the wandoard Quad RFS alone (md5sum 6494d166591044beba3b27d4d6e889b6)
  • the SDK for x86_64 linux host (md5sum c6ec065ba02add6005f8f4b82b5aa0a9)

Installation

The provided images target 2GiB sdcards.

  • Download the relevant image for you device
  • Extract it by using the xz utility : 
xz -dv image_name.bin.xz
  • Burn it on a sdcard by using 
dd if=image_name.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=4M

With /dev/sdx being the sdcard device (for instance /dev/sdd)

Optionally, you can use gparted to resize the second partition/FS and benefit from all the available space on your card.

Note that installation on internal SSD for utilite pro is perfectly doable. I will publish the way to do it when the recovery tool from Compulab will be available.

How to use

At startup, XBMC is automatically launched, just have fun…
Be aware that :

  • login is root and password is empty
  • You have a shell on the serial line interface (115200n8)
  • A ssh/scp server is up and running
  • Your wired Ethernet will be configured by DHCP and you can setup wifi thanks to the XBMC nm addon

Known issues

  • Sound saturation still occurs on analog output : Refer to this ticket
  • HDMI passthrough for HD audio is not yet validated
  • live TV support is being worked on but not yet available

Moreover, the Smart packages updater has a few issues in this release :
If the update command

smart update

does not work in spite of working internet connection, then, issue the following commands :

rm -rf /var/lib/smart/
smart channel --add wolf_repo type=rpm-md baseurl=http://www.stephan-rafin.net/rpmhf2

For obscure reasons, smart is fooled in thinking that some basics packages are not installed (while they are ) and fails when it tries to reinstall them…
As a workaround, when you install a package, use the stepped option :

smart install --stepped your_package

and refuse installation of already installed packages…

Bugs Report

This image is still work in progress.
If you experience instabilities, crashes or bugs, please report them to me without being too rude 😉
Known bugs are tracked here
Please when you report a bug :

  • Try to be as precise as possible regarding the context.
  • When it occurs, try to download the 2 files :
    • /tmp/temp/xbmc.log
    • /var/log/messages
  • Try to reproduce it

For now, report these bugs on this blog, then we will move to a forum thread may it be the XBMC one or another one if required.
I will create tickets in trac by myself as I have disabled the ability to create tickets for anonymous because of spams.

If you need to send files, I will give you a direct link to upload on my server by mail.
In case I ask you to create a core dump dump here is the way to do it :

  • Stop XBMC
  • login on the board and issue the commands :
echo "/tmp/core.%e.%p" > /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
ulimit -c unlimited
/imx6/xbmc/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin &

Then if XBMC crashes, a file core.* will be created in /tmp folder

Rebuild your own distro

Just issue the following commands on a Linux host to rebuild from scratch the whole distro :

#Install repo
mkdir ~/bin
curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

#Create BSP folder
PATH=${PATH}:~/bin
mkdir xbmc-bsp
cd xbmc-bsp

#Download layers
repo init -u https://github.com/wolfgar/fsl-community-bsp-platform -b dora
repo sync

#Initialize build environement
#Valid MACHINE values are wandboard-quad wandboard-dual and utilite
TEMPLATECONF=`pwd`/sources/meta-stef/conf MACHINE=wandboard-quad source setup-environment build

#Let's build the whole thing
bitbake xbmc-image

At the end you will find the image in build/tmp/deploy/images/$MACHINE folder.

Conclusion

That’s all for now, I will focus on liveTV (including hw deinterlacing) and I will investigate the analog sound output issue during the next days.
If you design a iMX6 board/device (Dual ultra or Quad) and would like that I add support to it, please mail me.
At last, if you appreciate my work and want to encourage it, you can consider to click the following button.
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XBMC for utilite (CEC support included)

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Utilite device

I have already alluded to utilite devices several times (at least here, here and here).

The utilite pro is definitively the best i.MX6 device I currently own for several reasons :

  • It is based on the powerful i.MX6Q with 2Gib of RAM
  • The bootloader is in a dedicated SPI NOR flash (so it is always available)
  • It includes a SanDisk SSD U100 drive which is just a sdcard killer
  • It provides 2 Gbps Ethernet interfaces (one of it being the standard imx6 ENET interface and the other a PCIe intel I211 controller).
  • It comes well packaged in a nice aluminum case (with power button) and accessories (wifi antenna + power supply + S/PDIF coax and uUSB to RS232 cables)
  • It also has an backed RTC (it may appear as a detail but is just another little asset for this product)

(it is worth mentioning that this product is based upon the embedded board cm-fx6 which is properly documented, especially schematics are available)

Some people would argue that it is expensive. Obviously it may seem to be the case when compared to a GK802 stick. But when you have a detailed look at the features, it is simply aligned with the price of comparable devices I guess…

XBMC for utilite

When I released my HardFloat XBMC image, I said I will also release an image for utilite.
So here it is ! This image is special : Not only does it provide my most recent XBMC build for iMX6, but it also features CEC as I mentioned in my previous post
You can download the image from this link – md5sum is cf4523d1e32ebd35faa5264abe3523fb.
Warning : I updated the image on the 30th of September 20:10 GMT because the included XBMC had an issue. Please check carefully your md5sum and download the image again if it is not the good one…

It is a sdcard image : That way you can try it without interfering with your SSD install (of course you will not benefit from the SSD that way but it is a safe and easy way to give a first try at my image)
To get it up and running :

  • Flash the sdcard and insert it in your device
  • Plug the serial line, configure it @115200n8 and power on your device
  • Stop the bootloader by pressing ESC
  • Issue the following commands :
setenv sdargs 'setenv bootargs console=ttymxc3,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait video=mxcfb0:dev=hdmi,1920x1080@60,if=RGB24 consoleblank=0' 
setenv start_sd 'mw.l 0x20E0034 0x593A046 ; mmc dev 2 ; fatload mmc 2 0x10800000 uImage-cm-fx6 ; run sdargs ; bootm'
saveenv
  • Then you can boot by issuing the command :
run start_sd

Please note that you will only have to issue the command :

run start_sd

to boot from the sdcard instead of the SSD during the next reboots …

Apart from this, you can refer to my previous post to get more info regarding this image…

i.MX6 CEC

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Introduction

According to wikipedia definition : “Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) is an HDMI feature designed to allow the user to command and control up-to 15 CEC-enabled devices, that are connected through HDMI by using only one of their remote controls (for example by controlling a television set, set-top box, and DVD player using only the remote control of the TV). CEC also allows for individual CEC-enabled devices to command and control each other without user intervention.
It is a one-wire bidirectional serial bus that is based on the CENELEC standard AV.link protocol to perform remote control functions.”
Since the Eden release XBMC has support for CEC thanks to libCEC. Besides the freescale i.MX6 SOC is able to handle this bus by itself : There is no need to buy an additional USB device such as this one.
Unfortunately, so far, nobody publicly added i.MX6 CEC support in libCEC. It was a shame and I decided to address this issue.

Development

While developing this missing part, I had to tackle 3 tasks :

  • Finding a hardware platform to develop and test this feature
  • Adding support in libCEC
  • Solving issues with the CEC driver itself

The first item may seem trivial but it is not. Indeed, many iMX6 products/boards do not properly wire the CEC signal.
Here are the info I gathered :

  • Wandboard was reported by a user to have CEC signal unconnected in this comment which refers to wandboard forums
    Edit (october, 12): After lots of comments, I confirm that no wandboard version is properly wired to use CEC (At this time at least). But if you have a wandboard quad and are able to use a soldering iron, then have a look at this thread
  • GK802 is no longer of interest to me : It is a device with no engineering support nor official technical data. It is not properly cooled. It has a very attractive price but, as a developer, I lost enough time with it. CEC signal may be connected or not, I don’t care as I know I will have no resource to understand what happens if it does not work…
  • I also know that nitrogen6x (I don’t own that board by myself) from boundary devices does not expose the CEC signal (thanks to this comment)
  • My utilite pro would have been a perfect device to test CEC. Unfortunately, my device comes from an early batch which was not properly wired (while currently produced devices are all good).

So, at the end, finding the right device for this development was not so easy. Fortunately compulab was kind enough to send me a new utilite from their new batch (and a properly wired CEC signal). I am about to publish a XBMC image with CEC support for utilite as a way to thank them for their support.

Then adding support for a new adapter in libCEC was not so hard : The code is well structured and there is obviously a provision to add new devices.
At some stage, I found that support for existing devices was a little cumbersome but I finally understood that the real culprit was not libCEC but the interface with underlying hardware and that I was able to have a simpler implementation as long as the driver allows for it. Note that, for now, I have not added support to handle several logical addresses at the same time (The hardware allows for it but there is not yet support in the driver for this)

And so we come to the third item : The CEC kernel driver. Freescale provides this driver but I was a little surprised of the current state of this driver (in the their BSP V4.0.0 or V4.1.0). It is supposed to be a simple character device (which is just fine) but I found quite a few shortcomings.

  • First they don’t care about being compliant with the well known POSIX interface :
    The read syscall will immediately return if no data is available even if the device is not opened with the O_NONBLOCK flag.
    This same read syscall will return a false value (ie not the effective number of bytes seen by userspace)
    The write syscall will return 0 if successful while it should return the number of written bytes
    The poll syscall will never state that the device is writable
  • Then they do not properly release the IRQ when the kernel module is unloaded (because of this, you will not be able to reload the module a second time)
  • At last, they use locking in a sometime hazardous way and even copy/paste comments from “vpu” in this driver…

As a conclusion, this driver has not been very carefully developed and is misleading when you try to use it at first time.
But I don’t blame freescale for this : At least they release this driver and, that way, they allow to enhance it. All the more as they also provide an excellent reference manual which describes very well the hardware interface.
So I had to solve the afforded mentioned items in order to use it smoothly from libCEC.

Final thoughts

At the end, I rebuilt XBMC with CEC support and was able to give it a try faced to my panasonic PZ81 TV.
And… it works just fine !
I am able to browse XBMC GUI with my TV remote.
I have already published my changes for libCEC here and will try to mainline them.
Changes for the kernel driver should be released next week.
[Edit : A first (still wip) patch is now public]
Last but not least, all this work is useful only if a product can take advantage of it. So here is a XBMC image which provides XBMC with CEC support targeted at utilite here.

Edit 2014/03/13 : I have moved iMX6 libcec to xbmc-imx6. Enhancement and bug tracking can occur here starting from now…
Edit 2014/04/28 : Other important fixes and port to 3.10 kernel are here

utilite benchmarks

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In a previous post, I said I will publish some additional benchmarks regarding utilite product. Unfortunately I had no opportunity to run and publish these benchmarks so far.
That’s why, I am pleased to share with you the comparative benchmarks between Rpi and utilite which have just been updated by Peter on is website.
Beyond these numbers, I would also like to underline that utilite is the only iMX6 product I am aware of which has a real gbps Ethernet controller.
Indeed other iMX6 products only have a Ethernet port connected to the internal ENET interface which is subject to 470 Mbps limitation (total for Tx and Rx) due to internal bus throughput. For details, see the ERR004512 erratum in the i.MX6Dual/6Quad errata document IMX6DQCE. Utilite pro has a second gpbs ethernet interface which is connected to PCIe and which is not subject to this limitation (of course the other port is concerned by the limitation)…

Odds are high I will speak about this device soon as installing an alternative image on SSD may interest some people while the first units are shipped…

ARMHF XBMC image – Part 2

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101

Introduction

As announced in a previous quick post, I have just released a new image for wandboard quad.

What’s in it

This image packages my latest version of XBMC for iMX6. It is built using ARMHF ABI.
This XBMC is derived from a gotham dev branch (which is 4 month old. A sync to catch latest main devs will happen soon).
It exhibits the following features :

  • Hw decoding is available for most codecs which are handled by the iMX6 VPU (noticeable exceptions are RV and AVS standard but they are not so common so it is not a major drawback).
  • codecs which are not directly handled by VPU are available through sw decoding
  • Network shares such as uPNP, SMB, NFS are available
  • RTMP protocol is available
  • Support for bluray has been built in (but tests are required)
  • All sound interfaces are available (HDMI, SPDIF and sgtl5000) and passthrough should work (not yet tested on my side)

How to install

  • Download the compressed (xz) SDcard image – md5sum is 70c39feda421fc4130909127219e27b8.
  • Extract it by using the xz utility : 
xz -dv wand.bin.xz
  • Burn it on a sdcard (At least 2GiB) by using 
dd if=wand_v0.0.2.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=4M

With /dev/sdx being the sdcard device (for instance /dev/sdd)

How to use

On startup, XBMC is automatically launched, just have fun…
Be aware that :

  • login is root and password is empty
  • You have a shell on the serial line interface
  • A ssh/scp server is up and running

Bugs

This image is still beta and work in progress.
If you experience instabilities, crashes or bugs, please report them to me without being too rude 😉
Known bugs are tracked here
Please when you report a bug :

  • Try to be as precise as possible regarding the context.
  • When it occurs, try to download the 2 files :
    • /tmp/temp/xbmc.log
    • /var/log/messages
  • Try to reproduce it

For now, report these bugs on this blog or in XBMC thread. I will create tickets in trac by myself as I have disabled the ability to create tickets for anonymous because of spams.

If you need to send files, I will give you a direct link to upload on my server by mail.
In case I ask you to create a core dump dump here is the way to do it :

  • Stop XBMC
  • login on the board and issue the commands :
echo "/tmp/core.%e.%p" > /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
ulimit -c unlimited
/imx6/xbmc/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin &

Then if XBMC crashes, a file core.* will be created in /tmp folder

Updates

A package manager (smart) is installed and will enable future updates.

First additional package is NTP client which is not already installed in the image. So, if you want a NTP client please issue the following commands on your board :

smart update
smart install ntp ntp-utils

What next ?

Of course stability is a must have and I will do my best to improve it by investigating and hopefully by solving reported bugs.
Then, regarding new features, my current priorities for the days to come are :

  • Sync with main gotham dev branch
  • Add support for liveTV
  • Add support for LIRC
  • Port libCEC on iMX6 to provide support in XBMC (not possible for wandboard as CEC pin is not connected, thanks to hste for pointing this. I will check if other products have connected this pin or not…)

I will also provide images ready to use for other devices than wandboard quad. I mostly think about utilite and maybe GK802 (with special care given the overheating issue) because I own these other products.
(If you want support for another iMX6 board or device and are ready to send to me a free sample then you can contact me.)

ARMHF XMBC image

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A new image for Wandboard Quad has just been uploaded [here](https://stephan-rafin.net/owncloud/public.php?service=files&t=9dac4041e962c9e96e21a048c86e71cb)
Early adopters can give it a try.
I will update this post to explain what is new in it.
I will also publish all my specific yocto recipes.
For other targets, do not worry : an image for wandboard dual will be released very soon and a tutorial to install on utilite published…

EDIT : The following

Utilite & XBMC

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In a previous post, I shared my first impressions regarding my brand new utilite pro.

I have just managed to get XBMC up and running on this device so it is time for a little update.
First, as I have just alluded : my XBMC build for iMX6 now works on the utilite. Basically, after a few tweaking in the utilite kernel, my whole yocto image runs fine. As compulab seemed to be very interested in getting XBMC up and running (and I shared all my work with them so far), odds are high they will package it in their own sw delivery (This is only my guess, not an official announcement in any way…)
Then, I expressed some fears regarding thermal dissipation when I realized that the case was used as a heatsink. In fact, I had a bad experience with my GK802 stick which exhibits a similar approach with very bad results. At the end, the utilite thermal behavior is correct : Not as good as the wandboard but perfectly acceptable : Using heavily the XBMC GUI for a few minutes enables to reach the following worst core temperature :

  • On the GK802 : 80°C (With an additional heatsink on the case, without it, you trigger the thermal protection at 90°C !)
  • On the wandboard quad : 55°C (The big heatsink is really efficient)
  • On the utilite : 65°C (Safe and far better than the GK802)

Note that the junction temperature of iMX6 (the consumer version) is 105°C and that a kernel driver is in charge of protecting the device against overheating (it handles an interrupt which is triggered when core temp reaches 90°C).
The 65°C worst figure of utilite seems just fine and, as a side note, it surely proves that the main issue with the GK802 is its thermal pad (and not the concept of heat dissipation through its aluminum case)

In my previous post, I also mentioned an issue with the second Ethernet interface. It is now solved thanks to compulab support : My device was one of the first produced units and some eeproms (whose content is required by the ethernet driver) were not properly programmed. No doubt that it will not happen with mass production units…
At last, I still have my little issue with the serial line (bad characters at 115200bps) but not a big deal as reducing the baudrate is a functional workaround. Out of curiosity, I will certainly plug a scope to understand why the reception is so poor at 115200bps…

As a conclusion, almost all my issues are solved and utilite is definitively a great product. It would be even better with a toslink connector for sure but well, I guess many people will be happy with the coax interface and this device has some serious assets with its SSD and its 2 Gbps Ethernet links…
As my yocto RFS is fully compatible, I will release images both for wandboard and for utilite in the future.
Ho, and you can expect a new image very soon : It is almost ready with an updated XBMC (new codecs and improved support for sound devices) and a full HardFloat ABI build. Stay tuned… 😉