Nishanth' tech rambles

Looking through the beagleboard facebook group , Saw two interesting points: Flash Lite 3.1 evaluation version for Beagleboard For all the Beagleboard fans out there, we’ve created an evaluation version of Flash Lite 3. This is a fully functional version of Flash Lite that times out in 3 minutes. It is built on Angstrom Linux distribution and requires X. Please email me if you are looking for more information or are interested in having one. I should mention that OMAP 3530 (ARM Cortex A8) is a powerful CPU and seems to handle graphics as well as video very well." How to build Valgrind for Beagleboard 1) Get Valgrind source code from SVN using revision 9648 and 1888 for VEX svn co -r 9648 svn://svn.valgrind.org/val grind/trunk cd VEX svn update -r 1888 2) Download the patch here http://bugsfiles.kde.org/a ttachment.cgi?id=32348 3) Apply the patch into the source code cd valgrind patch -p1 4) Run autogen.sh to run autotools 5) Configure the source code ./configure --host=arm-angst...

here are the sessions in the conference: http://www.embeddedlinuxconference.com/elc_europe09/sessions.html Includes Sascha and my personal fav - u-boot v2 .

Finally.... here it is!!! patches for u-boot to be send straight to u-boot mailing list .

Wow.. a blast of new sites for omapzoom.. And then I see this on the new omapzoom google groups !!! * MPEG4 Video Dec * H263 Video Dec * JPEG Dec * JPEG Enc * AAC Dec https://gforge.ti.com/gf/project/openmax/frs/?action=index And you also now have a wiki for omap

Got this link from a colleague - kinda useful if you would like to use it for your own purposes.. quote from the site: PLATO is a tool for displaying and analyzing software traces from an application being debugged. It connects to TTIF (libttif.so, included) which provides a lower overhead replacement for printf(), so as to minimize the chance that timing related bugs disappear when you enable debug traces, and also some binary trace APIs. PLATO can be running on a separate PC from the application being debugged, making it suited for embedded development. PLATO will decode/filter/display/visualize the traces

I have a confession to make: I am fanatic about clean code. I like it simple and I like it elegant. Few days back, I had a chat on linux omap mailing list on what I'd dream to see instead of a half a dozen cpu_has_feature_XYZ() APIs in the system.. The thought is more of this form: Some sort of infrastructure which is common to all silicons,platforms exist which provides method to register the tuple (silicon_rev_id | ip_module_rev_id, feature_errata_id) Specific drivers such as DMA, I2C, McBSP, PRCM etc.. on registration provides to the system the an array of tuples for that device. Platform on bootup provides the platform_data to the driver, which allows the driver to start, but now, it can also detect cpu_rev and can grap it's own IP Module rev from it's own register.. -> that is provided to the infrastructure Every time there is a need to check to enable/disable feature/errata, all the code needs to do is: if (is_enabled(dev, OMAP3_ISP) ) { do my stuff; } is...

Finally irritated with a bunch of CaMELcASinG, decided to write a small script albeit not too clean or optimized for the job of a search and destroy Since it is weird to write my own c interpreter to find the right targets to replace, I use output of ctags to generate tags file. if you are using kernel, you could just do a make tags to get the same output file. #!/bin/bash # Silly little script to replace CaMELCaSInG to lower_casing # Half a zillion thoughts later, # why not use ctags which has c interpreter already to do # function identification for us? if [ ! -r 'tags' ]; then echo "Sorry.. no tags file!" exit 1 fi if [ ! -r "$1" ]; then echo "I need a directory or a file for replacing.." exit 2 fi DIR_FILE=`echo "$1"|sed -e "s/\//\\\//g"` # tags have the following notation in field 4 (tab seperated) # e - enum value # d - define # f - function # F - File itself # g - enum type # m - structure parameter # p - prototype # r...

Kevin (PM) has put some cool stuff up on elinux page. may want to check it out..

Check this script out: for i in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu[0-9]; do echo $i `cat $i/cpufreq/scaling_governor`; done and see here for a description and this for a bit of history

Been feeling guilty of not blogging the last few months.. anyways, here is something of interest. For all those interested, see here LinuxCon takes place on Sept 21-23 -> registration is running if you like to take part in. there is also bunch of parallel conferences happening. see the list here what would really be interesting for OMAP is the linux plumber's conf and Han's new V4l2 plan Be there if you would like to see a new architecture for OMAP3 and beyond taken care in new spec of V4l2...

here is something i just saw -> kinda nice handy scripts useful.. Example A-7. behead : Removing mail and news message headers Example A-8. ftpget : Downloading files via ftp

beagleboard.org has already a pretty active community in linkedin.. the following news items were picked up from the groups' Cloumnist update ( ;) thank you.. great job by the way): GL to GLES converter announced http://code.google.com/p/gl-wes-v2/ Good for Pandora, the OMAP3 based gaming platform Recommend Link: http://code.google.com/p/gl-wes-v2/ White paper: Power-management techniques for OMAP35x From: E-R: RSS Columnists | May 26, 2009 TI's OMAP3 application processors address the need for low power without sacrificing performance. Static power management idles a system in a power-efficient state until processing is required, while active power management adjusts More » White paper: Power-management techniques for OMAP35x Link: http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/gencontent.tsp?co...

Thanks to Sergio Aguirre a quick HOWTO: Configure Ubuntu 8.10 for VPN access ( for Cisco vpn ) Basic Requirements : Make sure you have the latest patches and updates for Ubuntu 8.10: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install vpnc network-manager-vpnc Configuration: 1. Go to System > Preferences > Network Configuration 2. Select VPN tab 3. Click on Add button at the right side of the list 4. choose a vpn connection type: Cisco compatible vpn(vpnc) 5. click on create 6. Enter the following configuration (Other than the specified, leave everything else unchecked): Connection name: CorporateName Connect automatically: enable the checkbox if you would like it to.. Gateway: VPN GATEWAY Group name: VPN GROUP User password: my_user_id Group password: myPassword User name: 5. Click on 'OK' Enabling/disabling VPN access: 1. Left click on network icon in upper bar (next to the clock) 2. Go to VPN connections 3. Select CorporateName for enabling, or Disconnect f...

yes, we have heard of openOCD, Lauterbach, yet till date, I personally have'nt been able to use CCS to debug linux.. This post gives an interesting saga for those interested Warning : it is a little lengthy post, so as of the time of posting: Summary - CCS4 has support for linux kernel aware debugging, and unfortunately there is a small glitch of support of kernels 2.6.26 and above - the ccs team is working on a fix at this point.. hopefully we will have a full soln soon.. Thanks to John in deligently following up on this..

The post is a derivative of the omapzoom wiki page . Disclaimer: my mastery of the wiki tags are dismal.. apologies... some day i hope to have time to post it here Many new developers have been stumped when they need to use git-send-email in corporate environment – usually, if not as a norm, ms exchange servers form the backbone of such an email server system. This page was written based on one of such requirements. To get started, we shall consider common scenarios: a) Setting up a mail forwarding system with postfix on ubuntu b) Setting up a mail forwarding system on a fedora machine c) Using msmtp for using gmail a. to send a patch using a gmail ID b. to send a patch using your corporate ID but through gmail Postfix on Ubuntu – mail forwarding For setting up postfix, you need: a) A mail relay server which will allow your machine to talk to it -> speak to your IT representatives/ other developers sitting next to you b) Super user privileges on the machine you are working on. Step...

TI has a engineer to engineer forum here: http://e2e.ti.com/ forums this allows folks to: a) Get a direct and quick answer for a technical question b) lookup and search for old solutions which might help current problems one might face. Some of the interesting forums are: Code Composer Studio OMAP Application Processor Power Management IC such as TWL5030 TPS derivatives it even allows you to have a email notification and bunch of usual stuff..

Felipe C recently published gst-dsp Source: http://github.com/felipec/gst-dsp/tree/master Webpage: http://code.google.com/p/gst-dsp/ This is an alternative to the gstreamer plugins of gstreamer on TI Davinci and OMAP and openmax for OMAP gstreamer for TI Davinci and OMAP builds on top of dsplink while openMAX for OMAP builds on top of dspbridge -> interestingly gst-dsp builds on top of dspbridge. Try and do comment.. and dont forget to send your patches ;).. I have'nt had much chance to dig much into this new code yet -> but it sure looks sleek and full of potential

This news article was interesting.. hmm... how long before we see the first products in the market in the world of wireless devices?? munching time ;)

Background: Excerpts from the thread here A detailed presentation done by Richard Woodruff can be found here To start this discussion, think what OMAP really is.. OMAP is made of multiple small parts inside it (peripherals) - each peripheral can be individually shut off or switched on as need be. OPP or Operating Points: In fact OMAP could also be used like a car gear, if you need higher processing power, switch to a different "operating point". Each of these operating points is a set of voltage and frequencies that each peripherals and OMAP functions at -> usually the main peripherals of interest from a speed perspective are ARM and DSP, but like a car, when you speed up, you will consume more power.. [BUT unlike a car, during operation, OMAP's carbon footprin t is pretty tiny] Suspend/Resume: Since OMAP is also made up of various peripherals, you can switch off many of these peripherals when not in use, in fact you can have many levels of "switch off" = re...

[discussion thread here ] Few days back looking at OMAP3430 Public TRM I found the section 26.4.8.2(page 3427), it was exciting to see what possibilities lay here.. a little more digging later and few hours of coding later, figured out that by adding a certain data as a prefix to the real image, we can boot u-boot or for that matter any image straight from NAND flash into sdram.. essentially this is what x-loader does, only that OMAP3430 ROMCode already has that feature.. What exactly is Configuration Header(CH)? CH is a set of register values to the critical OMAP registers that define how the clocks, sdram controller, gpmc controller, mmc controllers are configured.. it is more like an array of register values - you fill them up with the correct values, and store the load address you would like the resultant image to load up, bingo, we have the image booting off that location.. There are few of these structures that are defined in the TRM which has a detailed description on the real...