Beagleboard

The Beagleboard is one of many OMAP development boards.

It is based on Texas Instruments' OMAP3530 processor featuring ARM Cortex-A8.

How to install disko on the Beagleboard

We are using OpenEmbedded as our cross-compile environment. So let's start by installing and configuring it for the Beagleboard.

Note: In the following section we refer to your installation directory by the term <oe-home>

Installing OpenEmbedded

Since the stable version of OpenEmbedded doesn't include the required kernel for OMAP3530 devices, that is needed by disko, we are using the development branch of their git repository. A good place to start is by using the following tutorial. 

cd <oe-home>
git clone git://git.openembedded.net/openembedded

Installation of the BerLinux overlay

This overlay includes all OpenEmbedded recipes that are needed to install disko on the Beagleboard. 

cd <oe-home>
git clone git://diskohq.org/disko-oe.git berlinux

Now you have to edit the file <oe-home>/berlinux/env_beagleboard.sh. Set OE_HOME to <oe-home>.

Installation of TI software

To use the DSP accelerated features of the Beagleboard, you have to install additional software from Texas Instruments.

Download the following packages and copy them into the <oe-home>/berlinux/binaries/dvsdk folder.

Note: You need to register at the TI website to download them.

Building the image

Now you can start building the disko base image which is based on the Ångström distribution and additionally includes the disko framework and its dependencies. 

cd <oe-home>
source ./berlinux/env_beagleboard.sh
bitbake disko-image

The resulting image is located in
<oe-home>/angstrom-dev/deploy/glibc/images/beagleboard/disko-image-beagleboard.tar.bz2.
The image should be extracted as described in the above mentioned tutorial.

Configuring u-boot

Enter the following commands at the u-boot prompt: 

setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit; fatload mmc 0:1 0x80000000 uImage; bootm;'
setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootfstype=ext3 rootwait \
                 omapfb.mode=dvi:640x480MR-32@60 mem=88M vram=12M omapfb.vram=1:4M,2:4M'
saveenv
boot

Start the disko test application

In order to use the DSP, you have to load some modules. 

cd /usr/share/ti/gst/omap3530/
./loadmodules.sh

Start the test: 

cd /opt/disko-testprog
./disko-test

Notes

To enable debugging information from the DSP, you can enter export CE_DEBUG=2.

Further links