Deploying and running a redpesk image for the BeagleBoard BeaglePlay board

The BeaglePlay is a Linux computing designed board using a TI Sitara AM625 system-on-chip. Its very interesting feature is the BeagleConnect® technology whichs allows a connection over the sub-1GHz IEEE 802.15.4 wireless network to a BeagleConnect® Freedom up to 1km away. Deploying a redpeskOS image on this kind of board consists of copying a disk image on an SDcard. See the BeaglePlay specification on the BeagleBoard website.

Download images

See Download Images section.

Download BeaglePlay image from command line

Create a directory to download the image:

mkdir ~/redpeskimage
cd ~/redpeskimage

Then download the latest redpesk OS image with this command:

wget -r -nd -nc --no-parent --accept-regex='redpesk.*smack.*\.(bmap|xz|sha256)' --reject-regex '(image\.raw|ova|index)' 'https://download.redpesk.bzh/redpesk-lts/batz-2.0-update/images/smack/minimal/aarch64/beagleplay/'

Control the image integrity

Before doing anything, please control the integrity of the downloaded redpesk image. Example:

sha256sum -c redpesk*.tar.xz.sha256

redpesk*aarch64*.tar.xz: OK

Copying the image on your SD card

Plug your SD card and find it (be sure it is unmounted)

Copy the correct device path using the command below. It should be a hotplug device.

lsblk -dli -o PATH,VENDOR,TYPE,HOTPLUG,MODEL
DEVICE_TO_COPY='/dev/<hotplug_device>' #in the example it is /dev/sdc

Example:

$ lsblk -dli -o PATH,VENDOR,TYPE,HOTPLUG,MODEL
PATH         VENDOR   TYPE HOTPLUG MODEL
/dev/sda     ATA      disk       0 WDC_WD10SPZX-08Z10
/dev/sdc     TS-RDF5  disk       1 SD_Transcend #MYSDCARD
/dev/nvme0n1          disk       0 LITEON T11 512
DEVICE_TO_COPY=/dev/sdc

Or if only one device is hotpluggable on your computer:

# need jq
DEVICE_TO_COPY=$(lsblk -dlJ -o PATH,VENDOR,TYPE,HOTPLUG,MODEL | jq -r '.blockdevices[] | select(.hotplug == true).path')
echo $DEVICE_TO_COPY

Umount if needed

lsblk $DEVICE_TO_COPY
# need to umount each partition
sudo umount <part*>

Example:

$ lsblk /dev/sdc
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sdc      8:32   1 14.6G  0 disk
├─sdc1   8:33   1  501M  0 part /run/media/iotbzh/0409-3A02
├─sdc2   8:34   1    1G  0 part /run/media/iotbzh/cd3c87ec-1011-4832-aef3-6be0ed3d3748
└─sdc3   8:35   1  2.5G  0 part /run/media/iotbzh/4e508264-8ce2-447f-a829-e4c31ea20047
$ sudo umount /run/media/iotbzh/*

Flash sdcard

Prerequisites: device is plugged in, found, unmounted

  • Extract the image first 
    tar xJf redpesk*.tar.xz
  • Flash it using dd 
    sudo dd if="Redpesk-OS.img" of=$DEVICE_TO_COPY bs=4M status=progress
  • Or using bmaptool 
    bmaptool copy "Redpesk-OS.img" $DEVICE_TO_COPY

TIPS: Once you are used to flash your image, you could do it much faster in one single step using bmaptool like this:

bmaptool copy "https://download.redpesk.bzh/redpesk-lts/batz-2.0-update/images/smack/minimal/aarch64/beagleplay/image.raw.tar.xz" $DEVICE_TO_COPY

This will download, control integrity and flash the latest redpesk OS image on your device.

Hardware DIP switch configuration

Integrated into the PCB, a DIP switch is generally present to allow you to choose between different boot mode.

There isn’t any DIP switch on the BeaglePlay board.

Connect to the BeaglePlay board

  • Plug in the SD card into the board. BeaglePlay inputs outputs
  • Connect the USB-UART cable following the three pins beside the SD card socket.
  • By default, the board will boot to the eMMC. To boot to the SD card, you need to hold the USR button while you powered the board by USB-C. Or by default, the bootloader stored on the eMMC is able to jump to the SD card if you have an extlinux configuration file in your /boot partition. Please refer to this documentation for more details.
  • Power on the board (USB-C cable).

    use dmesg to see the name of the USB plugged

    [    7.567111] usb 1-2.1.2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB1

  • Use picocom (or minicom depending on your tools!)

     sudo picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB1

    NOTE: Default root password is root.

  • Getting the address of the board to be able to use a SSH connection

    Connect an Ethernet cable between computer and the BeaglePlay.

     #on board
 ip -c a

     # on computer
 ssh root@<ip_board>

Installing a package

Your board is now ready to boot redpesk OS. You can install any packages and/or your own packages.

Please refer to section Application deployment for more details.