TI-AM335X-Android-DevKit Guide

TI-AM335X-Android-DEMO Quick Start Guide

Quick Start Guide - September 30, 2011

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to give a quick start guide to boot and experience Android on AM335x EVM.

The sources are located at http://gitorious.org/rowboat

NOTE: This is not an official TI Android DevKit release for development yet, this is just for demo purposes only

What's Supported

Device Support

This release supports the following platforms

• Texas Instruments AM335x 15x15 EVM
  
  • Base Board Revision > 1.0B
    
  • General Purpose Daughter card Revision > 1.0D [ capacitors (C125-C127) need to be removed for Matrix Keypad to work ]
    
  • LCD Board Revision > 1.0C [ capacitors (C48-C51) need to be removed for Touchscreen to work ]
    

Software features supported

• Android GingerBread 2.3.4 release from Google Android
• Android Linux Kernel 2.6.38 integrated with Linux PSP drivers
• Android GCC toolchain 4.4.3
• Bootloader (u-boot) and mini-u-boot (x-loader/MLO)
• SGX OpenGL ES Driver & Libraries DDK v1.7

• Built-in Applications and Demos
  • Browser, Video playback, Audio playback, 3D graphics demos,
  • RowboPERF (benchmark and performance measurement app), Dev Tools, Downloads,
  • Gallery, Video Decode for MPEG4, H.264 and WEBM/VP8
  • Android ADB support
  • Calculator, Clock, Contacts, Custom Locale,Search, Spare parts (developer apps)
• Peripherals drivers
  • USB (Host and Gadget), LCD, Keypad, Touch Screen
  • MMC/SD, UART, Ethernet, Audio playback

Complete directory structure of SD card Images

 am335x_mmcsd_images-ver1.0
 |-- Boot_Images
 |   |-- boot.scr
 |   |-- MLO
 |   |-- u-boot.bin
 |   |-- uImage
 |   `-- uImage_host (replace this as uImage if you need USB host functionality)
 |-- Filesystem
 |   `-- rootfs_am335x.tar.bz2
 |-- Media_Clips
 |   |-- Audio
 |   |-- H264
 |   |-- Images
 |   `-- MPEG-4
 `-- mkmmc-android.sh

What's Not Supported

• The following items are not supported:
  • NAND
  • WLAN/Bluetooth (Available on different package - not pre-integrated in this.)

Installation and Usage

Prerequisites

• Host Side
  • Linux Machine (Ubuntu) for SD card preparation
  • USB Card Reader

• Target Side
  • SD card of size minimum 2GB, See http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/TI-Android-GingerBread-2.3.4-DevKit-2.1_UserGuide#SD_Card_Recommendations
  • Male to Female null-modem serial cable
  • Micro-B to USB cable
  • Micro-A to USB cable
  • USB Hub
  • USB Keyboard
  • USB Mouse

Preparing the SD card and Booting

STEP 1 : Download the SD card image from HERE
STEP 2 : Get an SD Card of minimum size 4GBytes (Class4 minimum) and a USB Card reader
STEP 3 : Insert the USB SD Card reader (with SD Card) in your host Linux PC
STEP 4 : Prepare the MMC/SD card Image

$tar -xzvf am335x_mmcsd_images-ver1.0.tar.gz 
$cd am335x_mmcsd_images-ver1.0
$sudo ./mkmmc-android /dev/sd<device>

STEP 5 : Boot the board for Android experience.

• Setup the board/platform
  • Connect Serial cable to J12
  • Connect Power cable
  • Insert SD card in J13
  • Connect USB Cables[Either Micro-A or Micro-B] to J14
  • Do the DIP switch settings to boot from SD Card

For MMC/SD boot - On AM335x EVM
DIP switch SW3 should be set as shown below

Switch	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
State	OFF	ON	ON	ON	ON	ON	ON	ON

DIP switch SW4 should be set as shown below

Switch	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
State	ON	ON	ON	ON	ON	ON	OFF	ON

• • Switch on the platform with the power switch
  • Wait for 35sec to get Android up on the UI screen

NOTE: For the first time boot the System might take few minutes to boot.
NOTE: Sometime boot may get stuck at Android boot animation and android shell may get stuck. This is a known issue at this point of time. Need to reboot the board in this case.

NOTE: USE SW10 key on the board to go back to previous screen

Keypad mappings

The below table lists the keypad and USB Keyboard mappings to Android UI functionality.

Functionality	USB Keyboard/Mouse	Keypad on AM335X EVM
Home Screen	Home
Left	Left Arrow	SW3
Right	Right Arrow	SW4
Up	Up Arrow
Down	Down Arrow	SW6
Volume Up	Volume Up	SW10
Volume Down	Volume Down	SW9
Contacts	F3
Power
Select	Enter	SW5
Back / Previous screen	Mouse right	SW2
Menu	F1	SW1

Running Android Applications

After the first boot, the user will see an unlocked Android home screen. On subsequent boot, a locked screen will be displayed. User need to unlock the screen via touchscreen/mouse/or MENU key of keypad. Once the screen is unlocked, the user can navigate to Google Search, Tips, Browser or Application Launcher. Click the Application Launcher to see all pre-built applications.

Gallery Application

In Gallery, the user can view the images and play videos.

Rowboperf and 3D graphics applications

Select the rowboperf icon and get into the app directory

Browser Configuration

To browse web pages user should configure the Internet connection as given below.

  #> netcfg eth0 dhcp
  #> getprop net.eth0.dns1

This prints the dns for the ethernet port, do the following to configure the DNS entries on board.

  #> setprop net.dns1 <your_dns_server_ip>

If the platform is behind proxy, then following command should be executed to set the proxy settings

  #> setprop net.gprs.http-proxy http://proxyurl:80

USB Mouse/Keyboard

For USB Mass storage functionality, replace uImage with uImage_host in Boot_Images in SD card package and create the SD card again.

Then connect USB Mouse/Keyboard to J14 usb port via Micro-A to USB cable and boot the Board. The keyboard/mouse will be functional.

Connecting Host machine and the board through adb

Please visit http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Android_ADB_Setup

Technical Support and Product Updates

For further information or to report any problems, contact http://e2e.ti.com/android