AIoT tools manual

Overview

AIoT tools is a set of tools to configure or interact with MediaTek boards. The AIoT tools are written in Python. You need to have Python 3 installed on your system. The AIoT tools have been tested with Python >= 3.7, they may work with older versions of Python, but are untested against these older Python releases.

For now the tools only work on Linux.

AIoT tools is composed of 4 tools:

• aiot-board: tool to control the board (reset / power / download signals)

• aiot-config: tool to setup your host system in order to be able to communicate with MediaTek’s boards

• aiot-flash: tool to flash a board with a RITY or RITA image

Prerequisites

In order to install the AIoT tools you must have python3 >= 3.7 and pip3 >= 20.3 installed on your system. You can check their versions by running the following commands:

python3 --version
Python 3.9.2
pip3 --version
pip 21.2.4 from /usr/bin/pip3 (python 3.9)

If your version of pip3 is older than 20.3. Please upgrade it by running:

pip3 install --upgrade pip

Linux

Please refer to your Linux distribution documentation in order to check how to install python3 and pip3.

Windows

You can install python3 and pip3 from https://www.python.org/downloads/.

Note

Make sure to check the “Add Python 3.X to PATH” in order to be able to access the AIoT tools from any directory. If you installed Python from the Windows Store, you will need to manually add Python’s Scripts to the PATH variable.

AIoT tools are using fastboot to flash, so you also need to install the fastboot driver and the fastboot executable. Please follow the following guides to install the fastboot platform-tools and the fastboot driver:

• https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools

• https://developer.android.com/studio/run/win-usb

Installation

To install aiot-tools and its dependencies please run the following command:

pip3 install -U -e "git+https://gitlab.com/mediatek/aiot/bsp/aiot-tools.git#egg=aiot-tools"

Using Two-factor authentication

For Two-factor authentication you need to create personal access tokens on gitlab. These can then be used to login during installation instead of the account password. See the gitlab documentation about [Personal access tokens](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/profile/personal_access_tokens.html) for information on how to create one.

Tools

This section will describe the usage of every AIoT tool.

aiot-board

Warning

This tool is currently only supported on Linux

This tool is used to control MediaTek boards. It uses the FTDI chip that provides the serial console to also control the reset / power / download GPIO lines.

Note

Not all the boards can be controlled with this tool. Please check your board documentation to know whether this tools can control your board.

Configuration of the FTDI chip

In order to be able to control the GPIO lines, the FTDI chip must be properly configured. Run the following command to configure the FTDI chip:

aiot-board program-ftdi --ftdi-product-name <board_name> \
                          --gpio-power <power_gpio> \
                          --gpio-reset <reset_gpio> \
                          --gpio-download <download_gpio>

Please replace <board_name>, <power_gpio>, <reset_gpio>, and <download_gpio> with the values corresponding to your board. You can check your board documentation to know the values to use.

Note

Only one board should be connected to the host when trying to program a FTDI chip. If more than one FTDI chip is detected, the tool will quit.

For example for the i500-pumpkin board, the command would be:

aiot-board program-ftdi --ftdi-product-name i500-pumpkin \
                          --gpio-power 0 \
                          --gpio-reset 1 \
                          --gpio-download 2

Warning

Be careful, configuring bad values into your FTDI chip could potentially brick your board.

Configuring the FTDI chip should only be done once per board.

Reset the board

In order to reset the board you can run the following command:

aiot-board reset --gpio-power <power_gpio> \
                   --gpio-reset <reset_gpio> \
                   --gpio-download <download_gpio>

Reset in download mode

In order to reset the board and boot it in download mode you can run the following command:

aiot-board download --gpio-power <power_gpio> \
                      --gpio-reset <reset_gpio> \
                      --gpio-download <download_gpio>

Power the board

To simulate pressing the power button (for 1 second), you can run the following command:

aiot-board power --gpio-power <power_gpio> \
                   --gpio-reset <reset_gpio> \
                   --gpio-download <download_gpio>

Default values for the GPIOs

It is not necessary to set the –gpio-power, –gpio-reset, and –gpio-download parameters if they match the default values. Please check the default values used by the tool below:

Parameter	Parameter alias	Default value
–gpio-power	-p	0
–gpio-reset	-r	1
–gpio-download	-d	2

aiot-config

This tool is used to check the configuration of the host environment.

You run the following command to check that your environment is correctly configured:

aiot-config
fastboot: OK
udev rules: OK

In case your environment is not setup correctly, the tool will give you some instructions on how to correctly configure it.

aiot-flash

This tool allows you to flash your board. aiot-flash supports flashing Yocto images (RITY), and Android images (RITA).

You can flash an image by running the following command:

aiot-flash

The tool will try to find an image to flash in your current working directory. If you want to flash an image in a different path your can use the –path parameter:

aiot-flash --path /path/to/image

It is possible to flash invidual partitions by using:

aiot-flash <partition1> <partition2> <partitionX>

or

aiot-flash <partition1>:/path/to/file1 <partition2>:/path/to/file2

Yocto images

Select an image

A few options are specific to flashing Yocto images. If your build folder contains more than one image you can specify which image to flash by using the –image parameter.

aiot-flash --image aiot-bringup-image

or

aiot-flash -i aiot-bringup-image

Load a DTBO

When flashing you can also choose the Device-Tree Blob Overlays you wish to be automatically loaded at boot:

aiot-flash --load-dtbo <dtbo_name> --load-dtbo <another_dtbo_name>

List available DTBO

To know which DTBO is available with your image you can run the following command:

aiot-flash --list-dtbo

Interactively choose DTBO

Instead of specifying the DTBO to load you can also run aiot-flash in interactive mode:

aiot-flash --interactive

or

aiot-flash -I

Android images

When flashing an Android image you can select the DTBO by using the following command:

aiot-flash --dtbo-index <dtbo_index>

Please check your RITA board documentation to check the available DTBO indexes.

Bootstrap configuration

In case your bootstrap has a configuration different from the default values, you can use the following parameter:

aiot-flash --bootstrap lk.bin --bootstrap-addr 0x201000 \
             --bootstrap-mode aarch64

Board control

If your board supports aiot-board, aiot-flash will also be able to control the reset and download GPIOs. You can flash and control your board using the following command:

aiot-flash --gpio-power <power_gpio> \
             --gpio-reset <reset_gpio> \
             --gpio-download <download_gpio>

Warning

Board control is currently only supported on Linux