This section helps you set up your ConnectCore device to see Storyboard in action.

The goal of this section is to have a Storyboard demo application running in your device. This application includes three different demos:

  • Electrical vehicle charger demo

  • Robot arm demo

  • Medical demo

Follow these steps to get started using the Crank Storyboard demo with your ConnectCore 8M Mini Development Kit.

Requirements

  • A ConnectCore 8M Mini Development Kit

  • The Crank prebuilt images

  • LVDS or HDMI display for the graphical user interface

  • A mouse to work in the graphical user interface

    Due to a Weston issue on wl_shell applications, mouse input stops working after a few seconds. The mouse becomes unresponsive and the pointer turns into an hourglass or "loading" icon. See Left mouse click only possible a few seconds after application startup.

    You can read more about this issue at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/weston/-/issues/82.

    This occurs with anything considered a mouse input device. Any other input device (touch screen, keyboard, etc.) works as expected.

1. Download the firmware

Download the firmware images from the following location: https://ftp1.digi.com/support/digiembeddedyocto/4.0/r7/images/ccimx8mm-dvk/ccimx8mm-dvk-crank-installer.zip

The Crank demo image includes:

  • Storyboard Engine. The target-specific executable that loads the model generated by Designer and starts the execution of the state machine. See What is Storyboard?.

  • A Storyboard application created and exported with Storyboard Designer. This application is configured to be launch at startup.

2. Program the Crank demo image

Digi recommends you use the Universal Update Utility (UUU) through a USB connection to your development PC to program the images.

  1. Decompress the zip file in a directory of your choice.

  2. Set up your computer.

    1. Download the latest Universal Update Utility (UUU), a software tool from NXP.

      UUU version should be v1.5.11 or higher.

    2. Place the uuu executable in a directory in your PATH, such as /usr/bin.

    3. Install udev rules to allow any user to run uuu to access the USB port:

      $ sudo sh -c "uuu -udev >> /etc/udev/rules.d/70-uuu.rules"
$ sudo udevadm control --reload

  3. Connect a micro USB cable to your development PC and the other end to the target USB recovery connector.

  4. Reset the device by pressing the reset button on the board and immediately press any key in the serial terminal to stop the auto-boot process. The U-Boot bootloader prompt displays:

    U-Boot SPL dub-2020.04-r6.1 (Sep 19 2023 - 07:19:27 +0000)
DDRINFO: start DRAM init
DDRINFO: DRAM rate 3000MTS
DDRINFO:ddrphy calibration done
DDRINFO: ddrmix config done
Normal Boot
Trying to boot from MMC2
NOTICE:  BL31: v2.4(release):lf-5.10.72-2.2.3-2-gb67eb4618
NOTICE:  BL31: Built : 07:19:48, Sep 19 2023


U-Boot dub-2020.04-r6.1 (Sep 19 2023 - 07:19:27 +0000)

CPU:   i.MX8MMQ rev1.0 1600 MHz (running at 1200 MHz)
CPU:   Industrial temperature grade (-40C to 105C) at 32C
Reset cause: POR
DRAM:  2 GiB
MCA:   HW_VER=1  FW_VER=1.00
MMC:   FSL_SDHC: 1, FSL_SDHC: 0
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Model: Digi ConnectCore 8M Mini Development Kit
ConnectCore 8M Mini SOM variant 0x03: 2 GiB LPDDR4, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, MCA, Crypto-auth
  Board version 3, ID undefined
Boot:  MMC2

 BuildInfo:
  - ATF b67eb46
  - U-Boot dub-2020.04-r6.1

flash target is MMC:0
Net:   eth0: ethernet@30be0000
Fastboot: Normal
Normal Boot
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
=>
    Information in the console log may vary.

  5. On the target, in U-Boot, execute the following command:

    => fastboot 0

  6. On your development PC, change to the directory where you extracted the ZIP file:

    $ cd <zip-folder>

  7. To program the demo image, run:

    $ ./install_linux_fw_uuu.sh -i dey-image-crank

  8. Once the firmware is installed, the device boots automatically. The default username is root with no password.

  9. Remove the micro USB cable from the recovery connector of the ConnectCore 8M Mini Development Kit.

    The USB port will not connect if a cable is connected to the recovery of the ConnectCore 8M Mini Development Kit. See USB interfaces on the ConnectCore 8M Mini.

3. Test the Crank Storyboard demo

The Storyboard demo is automatically launched on boot.

Select any of the three different demos and interact with it:

  • Electrical vehicle charger demo

  • Robot arm demo

  • Medical demo

You can develop your own applications with Storyboard Designer, see Getting started with Storyboard.

To build your image with Storyboard Engine and applications, see Create a Crank image.