BeagleBox

If you’re playing with the idea of getting into embedded Linux, you might start with the most basic question: what does embedded Linux mean? In the not so distant past that was a little easier to define. An embedded board was typically physically smaller or at least used a very […]

What makes it embedded Linux?

Thu January 17, 2013 in BeagleBoard / BeagleBox / PiBox / XBMC / XBMC (updated 4669 days ago)

I’ve finally got a build for PiBox that supports a proper XBMC build. The latter took some finagling to force a cross compile that didn’t pick up any bits and pieces from the build system. So it’s all checked in and the builds placed on the SD card and it’s […]

PiBox / BeagleBox update: lost keyboard access?

Tue January 15, 2013 in BeagleBoard / BeagleBox / PiBox / XBMC (updated 4670 days ago)

It took some work, but I finally have SGX fully integrated into the build and have BeagleBox booting into an X session that can run opengl apps. I ran the SGX demos and they all seem to run fine. A couple showed frame rates betweeen 45 and 52 frames per […]

BeagleBox: SGX fully integrated

Mon September 03, 2012 in BeagleBox / Hardware / omapfb / Open Source / X11 tagged BeagleBox / SGX

So I've integrated TI's SGX package into the BeagleBox build. What this does is to run the SGX package's Makefile-based build which in turn installs a bunch of stuff from the archive into another directory. This directory will then contain a bunch of files which need to be installed again, […]

BeagleBox: SGX “install” script sucks

Fri August 31, 2012 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux / omapfb / Open Source / Software Development / X11 tagged BeagleBox / script / SGX

My media server died this past week. Actually, just the hard drive. It was running Fedora 14 and needed to be updated anyway. This server hooks into my Sony Bravia TV via HDMI using an nVidia GeForce 9800GT. After installing Fedora 16 to a new drive, I loaded kmod-nvidia and […]

Media servers: Flash, Hulu, Amazon, ARM and Fedora 16

Sun July 29, 2012 in Android / BeagleBox / Fedora / Firefox / Hardware / Linux / NVidia / omapfb / Open Source / Software Development / TV / Via Motherboards / X11 / XBMC tagged adobe / amazon / Android / ARM / beagleboard / BeagleBox / Bravia / drm / Fedora / firefox / Flash / flash player / flash player plugin / hulu / media servers

This past weekend I completed verification that the build works on Ubuntu (see below). In this process I also cleaned up the component builds a bit, added documentation and verified that a build from scratch (no local archives) works correctly. And it does. The resulting packages provide a booting system […]

BeagleBox: Ubuntu support ready, stable build but no video playback ...

Wed April 20, 2011 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux / Software Development tagged BeagleBox / BUI / ubuntu / video playback

I've managed to build and boot Buildroot 2011.02 using the 2.6.32 Arago kernel and Crosstool-NG 1.8.2 with GCC 4.4.3 and uClibc 0.9.30.2. The build works just as well as the older Buildroot 2010.11 I had been using, but there is a problem with where fonts are being installed. For some […]

BeagleBox: Buildroot 2011.02 progress (toward video playback), Ubuntu and Linaro

Sat April 09, 2011 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux / omapfb / Open Source / X11 tagged arago / ARM / beagleboard / BeagleBox / buildroot / cross compiler / crosstool-ng / DSP / gcc / kvm / Linaro / Linux / omap / OpenEmbedded / poky / rxvt / SGX / sysroot / ubuntu / uclibc / video playback / xfont / xfont_font-adobe / xfont_font-util / yocto (updated 5318 days ago)

A recent thread on the Buildroot mailing list about the use of Buildroot in practice got me thinking about why I created BeagleBox and similar systems at work. So I wrote up a paper on it and put it on my wiki. Comments and criticicisms are welcome.

Metabuilds for Embedded Development

Sun March 27, 2011 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux tagged beagleboard / BeagleBox / buildroot / crosstool-ng / Development / embedded development / metabuild / Metabuilds

Sitting around this weekend taking care of one of my pups (Bailey, who just had TPLO surgery to fix a torn ACL) I decided to take a deeper look at the problem with the cross toolchain supporting NEON instructions. I did a few more Google searches and found the Linaro […]

BeagleBox: fixed NEON problems in cross toolchain

Sat March 12, 2011 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux / omapfb / Software Development / X11 tagged BeagleBox / neon / toolchain

Today I finally brought X up on the BeagleBoard! The configuration is not ideal and there is much work to be done to stabilize and optimize it, but at least X is running. Here is how I get it done with BeagleBox. What to build to get X running with […]

BeagleBox: X is working, stability and optimization still to ...

Sun February 13, 2011 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux / omapfb / X11 tagged angstrom / beagleboard / BeagleBox / BUI / buildroot / cvs / DSS2 / getty / git / inittab / kernel / matchbox / neon / NOR / omapfb / sourceforge / surf / X11 / xorg / xterm

I made a little progress this week. First, I managed to build a 2.6.32 kernel based on Angstrom's recipes that appears to be the build to use for PSP support. Something tells me this is sufficient to get the Xorg driver working, but I haven't tried it yet. In any […]

BeagleBox quick hits: more kernels, NEON toolchain

Wed February 09, 2011 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux / omapfb / Software Development / X11 tagged BeagleBox / kernel / neon / toolchain

I’m back to working on BeagleBox again after a long pause. The holidays were the first delay, but now I’m down to working only weekends on BeagleBox because my weekday nights are taken up with working on the 2nd edition of my last GIMP book (promised to the publisher, No […]

BeagleBox: no joy with Xorg yet

Sun January 30, 2011 in BeagleBox / Hardware / Linux / Open Source / Software Development / X11 (updated 5388 days ago)

Michael J. Hammel

Building a better today…because tomorrow is in question…