Setup Tool Environment (Linux)

The flash programming process is performed over a USB connection between the target board and the host computer containing the image.

To do so, you need to install Genio tools. It is a set of tools to configure or interact with MediaTek Genio boards.

Note

Genio tools also supports Windows. Please visit this page if you want to flash the board under Windows environment, however a Linux host is required for building.

System Requirements

To install Genio tools on a Linux host, you need:

  • Ubuntu 18.04 or later LTS version

  • Administrator privilege

  • Internet connection

  • Git 1.8 or later

  • Python 3.8 or later

  • pip3 20.3 or later

  • Fastboot 28.0.2 or later

Note

If your board is powered through a USB-C connector, e.g. i500-pumpkin, we recommend using high quality “fast charging” USB-C cables.

Git

Install Git from the projects repositories:

apt update
apt-get install git

You can check the Git version by running the following command:

git --version
git version 2.34.1

If the version of Ubuntu you are using does not provide a new enough version of Git, the Ubuntu Git Maintainers Personal Package Archive (PPA) can be used to retrieve a newer version:

add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa
apt update
apt-get install git

Python 3

If you don’t have Python 3 and pip installed, run following commands to install them.

sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install python3
sudo apt-get install python3-pip

You can check Python and pip 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

Fastboot and ADB

Genio tools use fastboot to flash image. The Fastboot and ADB tools are packaged for Ubuntu. The Genio tools require the Fastboot device driver to be properly installed. ADB can be used to connect to the board once it has been flashed with rity-demo-image.

Run following commands to install packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

Note

Refer to Android SDK Platform-Tools to install Fastboot if you are using Linux distributions other than Ubuntu.

USB Device rules

In order for your host machine to be able to talk to the board through USB without needing root privileges, you need to create a udev rules that will grant user access to your device:

echo -n 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0e8d", ATTR{idProduct}=="201c", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0e8d", ATTR{idProduct}=="0003", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0403", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
SUBSYSTEM=="gpio", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/72-aiot.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

Also, add new udev rule and add your user account to plugdev group if you plan to use adb to connect to the board:

echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0e8d", ATTR{idProduct}=="201c", MODE="0660", $ GROUP="plugdev"' | sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/96-rity.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger
sudo usermod -a -G plugdev $USER

This last command requires you to logout and login again with your account to make it effective. You only have to do this once.

udev is a device manager for the Linux kernel. It can be used to grant an user or a group the permission to access a device. In this case, we added a udev rule to assign the plugdev group to the newly created SoC USB device. In order to access the SoC, your user account must be a member of the plugdev group.

UART Setup

For Linux users, before you can connect to the device you must check if your user account is a member of the dialout group:

groups
user dialout cdrom floppy sudo audio dip video plugdev netdev bluetooth

If not, you need to add your account to that group:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER

This last command requires you to logout and login again with your account to make it effective. You only have to do this once.

Install a Serial Terminal Emulator

A serial terminal emulator is required to communicate with the UART serial console provided by IoT Yocto. There are a number of serial terminal emulators for Linux, including picocom and screen.

To install picocom run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install picocom

To install screen run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install screen

Install Genio Tools

Genio Tools contains the following utilities:

  • genio-config checks if Linux or Windows host has proper setup.

  • genio-flash provides flash writing functions.

  • genio-board allows you to reset the board programmatically.

Only genio-flash and genio-config are used throughout operations mentioned in this guide. For usage of other utilities, please refer to Genio Tools.

After finishing the installation of the required packages and necessary configuration, we are now ready to install Genio Tools:

pip3 install -U genio-tools

Important

Please logout and login again after installing genio-tools. This makes sure the PATH environment variable is being properly updated.

After re-login, please check your installation with genio-config:

genio-config
fastboot: OK
udev rules: OK

In case your environment is not set up correctly, the tool provides you with instructions on how to correctly configure it.