Quickstart

If you have just purchased a phyCORE-AM62x development kit, start your development here.

phyBOARD-Lyra

Basic Evaluation Requirements

This Quickstart guide walks through booting the phyCORE-AM62x development kit into Linux and how to establish a console session with it using either a Linux or Windows host machine. Host system requirements are minimal for basic serial communication, and for the purposes of this Quickstart, any modern computer could be used. PHYTEC recommends using a Linux environment for our development kits but Windows works as well to establish serial communication. However, anything further serial communication requires a Ubuntu 20.04 build server or Virtual Machine.

Tip

Host system requirements for the more process-intense development tasks are detailed in the BSP Development Guide guide, but you won’t need those host system requirements to follow this Quickstart or to follow the Interface Guides.

Check the Board Configuration

The board should have been pre-configured during manufacturing, but we will double check it together as an exercise:

  • Press firmly down on the SOM with equal pressure on both sides to ensure that it is seated properly

  • Ensure that an SD Card is inserted into the SD card slot. This SD card was flashed during manufacturing and should feature the latest phyCORE-AM62x Linux image.

  • Check that the Boot Switches (S5, S6) are set to boot the system from the SD card slot.

  • Check that the boot switch S7 is set to ON to overide default boot settings.

Tip

The SD Card Booting Essentials chapter explains how to flash a BSP on a SD Card.

SD Boot Settings

SD Boot Switch phyBOARD-AM62x close-up boot switches

Serial Communication Setup

  • Connect the provided micro-USB Serial cable to the Serial Debug Port X49 on the development kit and the other end to a USB port on your host machine.

Serial Connection

Windows 10 Instructions

Tip

If your native operating system is something other than Windows 10, please feel free to reach out on PHYTEC’s Support Portal for more options and instructions.

After the phyCORE-AM62x development kit is connected to your windows host machine, you will need to determine the COM ports associated with it.

  • Open your system’s Device Manager and expand Ports (COM & LPT).

Windows Device Manager

  • Note the lowest COM port number of the two ports labeled “USB Serial Port” that are associated with the development kit.

    • The reason there are two COM ports is that one is the serial console for MAIN domain Cortex-A53 (Linux) and the other is for MCU domain Cortex-M4F (real-time)

Configure your Terminal Session:

  • Download or open the terminal emulator of your preference. There are many options such as PuTTY and TeraTerm.

Tip

This guide will use TeraTerm. Configuration of your terminal will vary slightly depending on the terminal emulator software you are using.

  • Create a new session using your preferred terminal emulator and specify the COM port to connect to (found in previous steps):

Open a New Terminal Session

  • Other parameters include: 115200 Baud, 8 bit data, no parity bits, 1 stop bit and no flow control.

Setup Serial Port Terminal Settings

  • Once you have an empty terminal session, your host system is effectively listening for a console data over the COM port you selected. The documentation for the phyCORE-AM62x, outlined throughout this wiki, will generally refer to this serial session as the “Target Console”.

Linux Instructions

After the phyCORE-AM62x development kit is connected to your Linux host machine, the FTDI chip appears as serial device under /dev.

  • Open the serial connection with screen.

Host (Ubuntu)
screen /dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_Dual_RS232-HS-if00-port0 115200

  • Open the serial connection with minicom.

Host (Ubuntu)
minicom -D /dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_Dual_RS232-HS-if00-port0 115200 -b 115200

Power the Board

  • Use the included USB-C 5V power supply to provide power to the phyCORE-AM62x development kit’s X54 power connector. The system will automatically boot. On your serial console you should reach a login prompt.

Expected Output
 ____   _   _ __   __ _____  _____   ____
|  _ \ | | | |\ \ / /|_   _|| ____| / ___|
| |_) || |_| | \ V /   | |  |  _|  | |
|  __/ |  _  |  | |    | |  | |___ | |___
|_|    |_| |_|  |_|    |_|  |_____| \____|

    _     __  __  ____   _      ___  ____   _   _ __   __
   / \   |  \/  ||  _ \ | |    |_ _||  _ \ | | | |\ \ / /
  / _ \  | |\/| || |_) || |     | | | |_) || |_| | \ V /
 / ___ \ | |  | ||  __/ | |___  | | |  __/ |  _  |  | |
/_/   \_\|_|  |_||_|    |_____||___||_|    |_| |_|  |_|


ampliPHY (Phytec Base Distribution) BSP-Yocto-Ampliphy-AM62x-PD23.2.0 phyboard-lyra-am62xx-3 ttyS2

phyboard-lyra-am62xx-3 login:

  • Login using “root” (no password is required).

Tip

You may find that commands and text in the terminal wrap over themselves if they extend too far on a single line in your Terminal Window. To improve usability and to prevent text from wrapping over itself use the following command:

Target (Linux)
shopt -s checkwinsize && resize

Safe Shutdown

Before removing power from the development kit, you must make sure that the operating system has safely shutdown. This will help to avoid things like filesystem corruption which can prevent the hardware from booting the next time it is needed.

  • To initiate a shutdown run the following command:

Target (Linux)
 poweroff

  • Once you have seen “systemd-shutdown[1]: Powering off.” it is safe to remove power from the development kit.

Expected Output
[  115.208115] systemd-shutdown[1]: Powering off.
[  115.278661] reboot: Power down

Note

For technical support, please visit PHYTEC’s Support Portal!