Intro from Munich

Patrick Mulder

Hi!

I've received the UP Board this week, and just plugged it in.
I have a background in web development and microcontrollers (Arduino and STM32). In the past I worked a bit with Unix servers in context of web projects. Currently, I am writing a book about Node.js for Embedded Systems see http://embeddednodejs.com . Also, I run a meetup on Embedded Systems, see http://munich-arduino.de. So, if anyone visits Munich and wants to get in touch that would be great.

The UPBoard looks nice for Multimedia projects and for running the latest Node.js versions (e.g. with nvm ).

Now, I am going to play a bit more with the board!

Cheers,

Patrick

PS Oh, and I work for Intel in a lab for component verification.

Filippo Bellini

Hi Patrick!
Thanks for your post and welcome to the UP community!
Hope you will share with all of us your feedback, suggestions and projects of course!
Enjoy your time with UP.
Cheers
Filippo

Dan O'Donovan

Hi Patrick

Welcome to the community, and thanks for your introduction.

I'm delighted to hear that you will be using Node.js on UP, as that's something I haven't done yet myself. Looking forward to hearing more about that.

I'm aware that the version of Node.js packaged for ubilinux (based on Debian Jessie) is relatively old (v0.10, I think). For anyone looking to install a newer version, I think one easy option is to use the pre-built binaries for Debian provided here: https://github.com/nodesource/distributions

Please let us know if you have any suggestions about that.

Best regards,
-Dan

Dan O'Donovan

By the way, as you're in Munich I should probably mention that we will be in Nuremberg next month at Embedded World 2016 ("AAEON" Booth I-310).
If you're interesting in attending, I think you can use the voucher code 'B336454' at the following URL to claim a free invitation:
https://www.embedded-world.de/en/visitors/tickets/voucher

Patrick Mulder

Thanks Dan! Yes, visiting Embedded World is certainly in my planning. I might go there with colleagues from work, but it should be possible to explore some general trends such as Up-Board too.

Back to the Up-Board, I could not do much today. Downloading the (1.5 GB!) Ubilinux took some time, then flashing with my laptop too:

$ sudo dd if=ubilinux-3.0RC1.iso of=/dev/disk2s1 bs=8m

198+1 records in
198+1 records out
1662976000 bytes transferred in 2781.366866 secs (597899 bytes/sec)

For a quick start, it might be nice to have a smaller Linux distribution if possible. It's interesting to see that the SD-Card is replaced with a USB drive. It might be nice to mark the USB 3.0 OTG port somehow (with a sticker or some color maybe). The 5V DC plug is easy to work with, but power supply via USB (such as with RasPi) might be nice too. With this, and a USB Ammeter It would help to quickly get insight into the power consumption of the board.
Also, the form factor of the USB stick could be smaller. The card form factor is a bit surprising to me (while funny in a way).

The 40 pin GPIO header asks to attach an embedded display. I did not buy one, but it might be nice for some future project. Of course, framebuffer support and display driver would require some additional configurations.

Anyway, it was nice to see that Atom x5 processor.

Patrick Mulder

(remember, I am mainly comparing UpBoard with RasPi )

DCleri

Thanks for your suggestions, we really appreciate your contribution!

For any additional feedback you may have, feel free to open a new topic in the "suggestion-box" section: http://www.up-community.org/forum/suggestion-box

Patrick Mulder

My install makes progress with another USB stick.

So, on my MacBook Air, the copy process was:

1) format USB stick
2) unmount disk and copy with dd:

pm:Downloads pmu$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful
pm:Downloads pmu$ sudo dd if=ubilinux-3.0RC1.iso of=/dev/disk2 bs=8m
198+1 records in
198+1 records out
1662976000 bytes transferred in 5428.586056 secs (306337 bytes/sec)

Next , I am running the installer. Looks good. There was a question about the UEFI boot mode (force yes/no) --> selected 'no' and installation looks good.

Patrick Mulder

Ok, I get some more question about boot setup that might be confusing to newcomers.

"Device for boot loader installation:
Enter device manually
/dev/mmblk0
/dev/sda (usb-Verbatim....)
"

I would just press enter now, but maybe there is a better choice, or some background what the options are might be nice.

Björn Reichert

hi,
MBR is wrong - please read the thread
http://up-community.org/forum/ubilinuxos/12-unable-to-boot#58
http://up-community.org/forum/ubilinuxos/12-unable-to-boot?start=20#69

Dan O'Donovan

PMulder wrote:

.... There was a question about the UEFI boot mode (force yes/no) --> selected 'no' and installation looks good.

Unfortunately you need to select 'yes' here. Selecting 'no' will result in a legacy boot mode installation, which currently is not supported by the BIOS. This in turn will result in the failure to find the boot partition that you reported later in another thread.
I'm afraid you will have to repeat the installation.

Patrick Mulder

thanks, no prob, might have some time tomorrow

Patrick Mulder

Hi!
All worked now! This messages comes via the x64 Atom core of the Up.
Installing curl and nvm now, and it works great too:

root@ubilinux:/home/ubilinux# node -v
v4.0.0

Stefan Smietanowski

dan wrote:

PMulder wrote:

.... There was a question about the UEFI boot mode (force yes/no) --> selected 'no' and installation looks good.

Unfortunately you need to select 'yes' here. Selecting 'no' will result in a legacy boot mode installation, which currently is not supported by the BIOS. This in turn will result in the failure to find the boot partition that you reported later in another thread.
I'm afraid you will have to repeat the installation.

When you say "currently not supported", does it mean that it will or may be in the future?

// Stefan

Dan O'Donovan

Hi Stefan
The information we have from the BIOS team is that Intel did not provide a VBIOS implementation for the Cherry Trail platform to support Legacy Boot mode, so it seems unlikely that it will be supported. If I learn anything more about this I'll let you know.

Stefan Smietanowski

Hi Dan,

Thank you for the quick reply - It was as a suspected. I was just surprised to see that formulation

For most people it shouldn't matter, and for those it may they uslaly have the technical knowhow to work around it.

// Stefan

Dan O'Donovan

Hi Stefan
I'm hoping we can improve on this in the future, perhaps by ensuring that the eMMC is clean/unformatted when the boards are shipped. This is being investigated at the moment.
Many thanks,
-Dan