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:

  • Internet connection

  • Ubuntu 20.04 or later LTS version

  • Administrator privilege

  • Python 3.9 or later; Python 3.12 recommended

  • pip3 20.3 or later

  • Fastboot 34.0 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.

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 3.10.12
pip3 --version
pip 23.3.1 from /usr/bin/pip3 (python 3.10)

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 images onto the device. Therefore, please ensure that the Fastboot device driver is properly installed before proceeding. After flashing the board with rity-demo-image, you can use the ADB tool to interact with the device, such as running commands and transferring files.

Both Fastboot and ADB tools are available as packages for Ubuntu. Please run following commands to install the tools:

sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install adb fastboot

Note

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

USB Device Rules

To allow your host machine to communicate with the board via USB without requiring root privileges, you need to create a udev rule that grants user access to the 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

Note

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.

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

After adding your user account to the group, you must logout and login again for the changes to take effect. This setup only needs to be performed once.

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.