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.

Genio tools also supports Windows. Please visit this page if you want to flash the board under Windows environment.

Host System Requirement

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

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.

Warning

genio-board is not supported under Windows environment. You can flash the image with genio-flash, but can not power-cycle Genio 350-EVK with genio-board under Windows environment.

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.

Setup Genio Tools on Linux

On Linux, follow these steps to setup required software, USB device rules and install Genio Tools.

Git

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

Python3

If you don’t have Python and pip installed on your Ubuntu, 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

Genio tools use fastboot to flash image, so you also need to install the Fastboot executable. Run following commands to install packages:

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

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

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 an udev rule to assign 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.

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.

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 | grep dialout
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.