Tag Archives: development envinronment

Development tools on Beaglebone

In the previous article we have installed and updated to the latest Debian image our BeagleBone

Debian sd card setup for Beaglebone Black

We also enabled the network services to access the board using the hostname.

After these changes we can access the Beaglebone using the following address in the the browser

http: //beaglebone.local

The web interface presents several examples of code executed with bonescript, javascript library based on node.js framework

Node.js

You can perform these simple examples to begin to interact with the board. There are also links to the development tools such as Cloud9, Nodered and informations about these development tools

toolsClicking on Cloud9 we access at the section dedicated to this tool. It is shown how to create a simple example and to run at boot the code placing it into the autorun folder in the IDE interface. From this section we can access to the Cloud9 ide available on port 3000 of the Beaglebone site

Cloud9

For more information about the tool, refer to the site

Cloud9

Accessing to the Nodered section we find  the link  to the web page about the basic informations about Nodered

Getting stared with Nodered

and the link to the Nodered ide, running at 1880 port of the web server running on BeagleBone

Beaglebone Nodered

Nodered beaglebone

In the web page about the first steps for Nodered there are examples with which to start using the tool. From the web site https://nodered.org we can have more informations about the tool.

In addition to tools in javascript on BeagleBone there are C/C++ compilers, Python interpreter and the possibility  to add additional development tools.

From the home page of the our BeagleBone board web interface, http: //beaglebone.local, we find the informations about all available headers and functions. The following image shows the  expansion headers

cape headers

In next articles we will show some code examples with the development board.

Debian envinronment for embedded systems development

In this article we describe Debian 8.5 installation we’ll use to compile Openelec for Orange Pi PC, Enigma2 images and other operations for embedded devices.

Download  AMD64  Debian 8.5 iso

Debian X86_64

Proceed with the operating system installation on your system. It is recommended  to use a virtual machine like VirtualBox. Use at least  4 GB of ram and 50 GB of hard disk.

VirtualBox

Using VirtualBox it is possible the virtual disk creation with dynamic space allocation. After the operating system installation log on into the system with the user created during the installation; we used the “sviluppo” user id. It is possible to log on to the linux system using the graphical interface or through ssh to the IP address of the Debian system.

Add to sudo group the user created in the Debian installation; open a shell command window and execute

In our case we have the following output

sviluppo user doesn’t belong to sudo group. Execute the command

Enter the root password when required and execute

In our example

Reboot the system

At the reboot log on into Debian and proceed to add the packages repositories, if not already present.  Go to the /etc/apt folder

Backup the original file

Edit the file using for example the vi editor

It is possible to comment out the lines positioning at the beginning of the line, press i to go in editing mode and add the # character. Pressing the ESC key we go into reading mode and it is possible to move in the file using the  arrow keys. In case of errors in editing mode it is possible to avoid the last change using the key ESC+u.

Comment out the  lines

Add the following lines

To add the lines press o keys to go into writing mode with an empty new line; with copy and paste we can add all the lines or proceed manually for each of them.

To save the file and quit press ESC+:wq.

It is possible to use one of the text editors available in Desktop Envinroment on which we logged into to edit and save the file.  For example to use pluma editor open a shell command windows and execute

From pluma open the file /etc/apt/sources.list, make the changes described above and save the file.

Update the repository lists  and the packages

Install the development packages

Install an ftp server to use for files transfer

After the installation open the file  /etc/vsftpd.conf and uncomment the following parameter

Open the file with vi or pluma as superuser

With vi editor search the string with the command

Delete the # character positioning the cursor on it and pressing the x key.

Save and quit with ESC+:wq.

Restart the ftp server using the command

We have now the envinronment to compile, modify, develop  our embedded systems.