Yocto Kirkstone Release for i.MX 8 Platforms

Published on August 3, 2022

Table of Contents

  1. For the Impatient
  2. How to Burn
  3. Build procedure
  4. Features list
  5. Display support
  6. GPU acceleration
  7. Camera input
  8. Basler camera input
  9. Ethernet
  10. Wi-Fi
  11. Bluetooth
  12. VPU decoding
  13. VPU encoding
  14. CAN
  15. NPU support
Nitrogen8M SBCNitrogen8M SOMNitrogen8M Mini SOMNitrogen8M Mini SBCNitrogen8M Plus SOMNitrogen8M Mini SMARCNitrogen8M Plus SMARC

We are pleased to announce a new Yocto release Kirkstone for our Nitrogen8 family of SBCs and SOMs based on i.MX 8 processors. This release includes our latest 5.15 kernel. Below you will find download links for the images as well as detailed instructions for building including a features set.

For the Impatient

You can download the Yocto images from here:

Update 20221003 changelog:

  • Add additional machine learning recipes/packages to image

Update 20221129 changelog:

  • Update to Kernel/Linux version 5.15.52
  • Update to Uboot version 2022.04
  • Support for all uboot defconfigs variants to be built and binaries to be included in final image
  • Fix uboot binary on 8mq

Update 20221205 changelog:

  • Update machine learning recipes from meta-freescale-ml as per NXP kirkstone-5.15.52-2.1.0 BSP

Update 20230117 changelog:

  • Update to Kernel/Linux version 5.15.71
  • Update various recipes (graphics, multimedia etc.) as per NXP kirkstone-5.15.71-2.2.0 BSP
  • Add boundary-image-multimedia-full-chromium image option which is an extension of boundary-image-multimedia-full that includes chromium-ozone-wayland. Chromium is now supported on i.MX 8 platforms and includes hardware accelerated video decoding. Note the prebuilt images are labeled boundary-image-multimedia-full but they include chromium-ozone-wayland. If you wish to build chromium into the image, you need to build boundary-image-multimedia-full-chromium.

Update 20230613 changelog:

  • Support for 8MP SMARC added.
  • Support for IMX219 Camera Module added.

Update 20230818 changelog:

  • Support for Rev10 Nitrogen8M Plus SMARC added.

Update 20230922 changelog:

  • Nitrogen8M Plus SMARC rev1 fixes.

Update 20231206 changelog:

  • Nitrogen8M Mini SMARC fixes.

As usual, you'll need to register on our site and agree to the EULA because it contains NXP content.

How to Burn

You can program the SW to eMMC using the instructions below: programming-emmc-on-i-mx-platforms You can also program the SW to SD Card or USB Stick via zcat and dd under Linux: 

~$ zcat *boundary-image*.wic.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

In addition, you can use the balenaEtcher utility to flash the eMMC, SD Card or USB stick via Windows or Linux: balenaEtcher

Build procedure

This image uses the kirkstone branch of our boundary-bsp-platform repository. To build the image, we recommend using a Docker Container so that you can build with a reproducible and stable build environment. Otherwise, you’ll need these packages installed as well as this repo tool that can be installed like this: 

~$ sudo apt-get install repo

Then create your build directory and initialize everything. 

~$ mkdir ~/kirkstone && cd kirkstone
~/kirkstone$ repo init -u https://github.com/boundarydevices/boundary-bsp-platform -b kirkstone
~/kirkstone$ repo sync

Next, setup the environment for building. For this image we will be building the boundary-xwayland distro for the target machine

~/kirkstone$ MACHINE= DISTRO=boundary-xwayland . setup-environment build

Now bitbake boundary-image-multimedia-full which is equivalent to fsl-image-multimedia-full with Boundary-specific packages added such as BD-SDMAC support. 

~/kirkstone/build$ bitbake boundary-image-multimedia-full

After some time this should build the same image as above, with the layers being at commits as per the time when repo sync was executed. If you are interested in each project revision at the time of the build, you can find a frozen manifest for those images here. The image file will deploy to tmp/deploy/images/{MACHINE}/boundary-image-multimedia-full-{MACHINE}.wic.gz.

Features list

The image built above contains the following components:

  • Linux kernel 5.15.y
  • U-Boot 2022.04
  • Weston 10.0.1 for i.MX
  • GStreamer 1.20.0 for i.MX
  • GPU Vivante libraries 6.4.3p4.4
  • VPU Hantro libraries v1.27.0
  • ISP VVCAM v4.2.2.19
  • qcacld-lea-3.1 Wi-Fi driver for BD-SDMAC
  • BlueZ 5.65 with support for BD-SDMAC

The next sub-sections will describe how to test most features.

Display support

Please make sure your platform includes the latest U-Boot:

This version of U-Boot supports the display configuration, allowing to use any of the following displays:

Note that we've noticed that the NXP HDMI driver is picky when it comes to custom display timings (sometimes refuses to set the clock). So if you are experiencing any issue with HDMI, please try entering the following commands in U-Boot in order to force the use of standard timings: 

=> setenv cmd_custom 'setenv bootargs $bootargs drm_kms_helper.edid_firmware=HDMI-A-1:edid/1280x720.bin'
=> saveenv

GPU acceleration

As usual, in order to test the GPU you can use the example apps provided by Vivante: 

root@:~# /opt/imx-gpu-sdk/GLES2/Blur/GLES2.Blur_Wayland -d

Camera input

Camera MIPI-CSI input can be checked using our OV5640 MIPI with GStreamer: 

root@:~# gst-launch-1.0 v4l2src device=/dev/video0 ! \
    video/x-raw,width=1280,height=720 ! waylandsink

Basler camera input

This build fully supports the Basler daA3840 8MP camera from Basler when using our Nitrogen 8M Plus which is part of our Evaluation Kit:

The isp-vvcam driver and imx8-isp service are loaded automatically when the camera is detected. From there a simple GStreamer pipeline will allow you to see the stream: 

root@nitrogen8mp:~# gst-launch-1.0 -v v4l2src device=/dev/video2 ! waylandsink
...
[  352.348796] wdr3 res: 1920 1080 
[  352.352471] enter isp_mi_start
[  357.581179] ###### 62.42 fps ######
[  362.771924] ###### 62.42 fps ######

Ethernet

Once the eth0 interface is up, you can use iperf3 to check Ethernet performances: 

root@:~# iperf3 -c 192.168.1.60                                                                                                                         
Connecting to host 192.168.1.60, port 5201
[  5] local 192.168.1.13 port 32880 connected to 192.168.1.60 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.09 GBytes   938 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.04  sec  1.09 GBytes   932 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi can be tested with nmcli as shown below: 

root@:~# nmcli d wifi connect  password 
root@:~# iw wlan0 link
Connected to a4:3e:51:08:54:f6 (on wlan0)
        SSID: Jabu_5GHz
        freq: 5240
        RX: 3243 bytes (31 packets)
        TX: 9117 bytes (48 packets)
        signal: -79 dBm
        tx bitrate: 15.0 MBit/s MCS 0 40MHz short GI
root@:~# ping google.com -Iwlan0                                                                                                                       
PING google.com (216.58.198.206): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 216.58.198.206: seq=0 ttl=55 time=3.470 ms
...

Bluetooth

For products with a Silex bluetooth module, you'll be able to connect using our handy silex-uart script with the following commands: 

root@:~# hciconfig hci0 up
root@:~# hcitool scan
Scanning ...

VPU decoding

If your platform supports VPU decoding, here is an example on how to test it using the gplay tool: 

root@:~# wget http://linode.boundarydevices.com/videos/Hobbit-1080p.mov
root@:~# gplay-1.0 /home/root/Hobbit-1080p.mov

VPU encoding

Here is a simple example that shows how to encode a video stream from the camera into H.264 using the VPU encoder: 

root@:~# gst-launch-1.0 -v -e v4l2src device=/dev/video0 ! 'video/x-raw,width=1920,height=1080' \
                    ! vpuenc_h264 ! filesink location=test.h264
^C
root@:~# gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=test.h264 typefind=true ! 'video/x-h264' ! \
                    h264parse ! vpudec ! waylandsink

CAN

For platforms with CAN, you'll be able to bring up the interface(s) using this following command: 
root@:~# ip link set can0 up type can bitrate 500000

From this point, you can use commands such as cansend and candump to send or display messages on the bus respectively.  

NPU support

NPU support is fully integrated into this build when using our Nitrogen 8M Plus with TensorFlowLite and ARMNN support of the NPU. You can find various example demos here: IMX-MACHINE-LEARNING-UG.pdf   If you have any issues, please email support@boundarydevices.com