AIoT Tools

Overview

AIoT tools is a set of tools to configure or interact with MediaTek Genio 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 3.6 and 3.9, they may work with older versions of Python, but are untested against these older Python releases.

Note

There are known issues for Python 3.10 on Windows platform. If you use Windows, we recommend you to install Python 3.9 instead.

AIoT tools is composed of 3 tools:

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

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

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

Setup Tool Environment (Linux)

Please refer to Setup Tool Environment (Linux).

Setup Tool Environment (Windows)

Please refer to Setup Tool Environment (Windows).

AIoT Tools Usage

This section will describe the usage of every AIoT tool.

aiot-config

Note

The aiot-config tool is supported on both of Linux and Windows. The udev rules information is only supported on Linux environment.

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

Note

The aiot-flash tool is supported on both of Linux and Windows.

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

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

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 rity-demo-image

or

aiot-flash -i rity-demo-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

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

Warning

Board control is currently only supported on Linux.

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>

aiot-board

Warning

The aiot-board 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 Development Boards 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 Genio 350-EVK board, the command would be:

aiot-board program-ftdi --ftdi-product-name i350-evk \
                          --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