Building the Firmware

PHYTEC provides firmware for the phyCORE-RT1170 based on the Zephyr Project - an open-source real-time operating system (RTOS) designed for resource-constrained devices. This section walks you through setting up your development environment and building the example firmware for the phyCORE-RT1170 Development Kit. Once built, the firmware can be used as a foundation for further development.

If you prefer not to build the software yourself or want to evaluate the development kit quickly, you can use one of the available Pre-Built Binaries.

Requirements

Before you begin, ensure the following system requirements are met:

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (or newer), 64-bit, with root privileges * Virtual environments such as VMWare Workstation, VMWare Player, or VirtualBox are supported
At least 10 GB of free disk space
Active internet connection

Host Setup

Install the required host packages for Zephyr:

sh-host:~$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends git cmake ninja-build gperf ccache \
                            dfu-util device-tree-compiler wget python3-dev python3-pip \
                            python3-setuptools python3-tk python3-wheel xz-utils file \
                            make gcc gcc-multilib g++-multilib libsdl2-dev libmagic1

Installing the Zephyr SDK

For a minimal setup, download the SDK for only the required ARM32 target:

sh-host:~$ cd ~
sh-host:~$ wget https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/download/v0.17.0/zephyr-sdk-0.17.0_linux-x86_64_minimal.tar.xz
sh-host:~$ wget -O - https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/download/v0.17.0/sha256.sum | shasum --check --ignore-missing
sh-host:~$ tar xvf zephyr-sdk-0.17.0_linux-x86_64_minimal.tar.xz

Enter the extracted SDK directory and run the setup script:

sh-host:~$ cd zephyr-sdk-0.17.0
sh-host:~$ ./setup.sh -c -h -t arm-zephyr-eabi

Install the udev rules required for OpenOCD:

sh-host:~$ sudo cp ~/zephyr-sdk-0.17.0/sysroots/x86_64-pokysdk-linux/usr/share/openocd/contrib/60-openocd.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
sh-host:~$ sudo udevadm control --reload

Git Setup

If you haven’t already configured Git on your host, run the following:

sh-host:~$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
sh-host:~$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Note

New to Git? Check out the official guide: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-First-Time-Git-Setup

Source Directory Setup

Create a dedicated directory for your Zephyr-based firmware development and navigate into it:

sh-host:~$ mkdir -p ~/BSP-Zephyr-RT1170-ALPHA1/
sh-host:~$ cd ~/BSP-Zephyr-RT1170-ALPHA1/

Create a Python virtual environment and install the required tools:

sh-host:~$ virtualenv .venv
sh-host:~$ source .venv/bin/activate
sh-host:~$ pip install west pyelftools pyocd

Clone the Zephyr example repository for the phyCORE-RT1170 and initialize all necessary submodules, including Zephyr and the NXP HAL:

sh-host:~$ west init -m https://github.com/phytec/zephyr-phytec-rt1170-examples --mr v4.0.0-phy2 .
sh-host:~$ west update
sh-host:~$ west zephyr-export

Building the Example Firmware

Before building, source the Zephyr environment script:

sh-host:~$ source zephyr/zephyr-env.sh

Note

Remember to activate the Python virtual environment and source the Zephyr environment script each time you open a new terminal.

To build the default firmware for the Cortex-M7 core:

sh-host:~$ west build -p auto -b phyboard_atlas/mimxrt1176/cm7 zephyr-phytec-rt1170-examples/app

To target the Cortex-M4 core instead, change the board name to phyboard_atlas/mimxrt1176/cm4.

Optional: Enable the Zephyr shell or debugging features by specifying additional configuration files:

sh-host:~$ west build -p auto -b phyboard_atlas/mimxrt1176/cm7 zephyr-phytec-rt1170-examples/app -- -DEXTRA_CONF_FILE="shell.conf debug.conf"

See chapter Flashing with JTAG to learn how to flash the firmware.