Saturday, June 1, 2013

Debian Wheezy on SUN4I (Allwinner A10)

I purchased a mini android tv box available at cd-rking. The item is actually a re-branded BC218 (similar specs to MK802+). This connects to a hdmi monitor, and with a mouse and keyboard this can function as a mini computer. After some testing, I decided to customize a Debian image dedicated for OpenCV development.


download: Debian Wheezy armhf image (~164MB)
- Debian Wheezy w/ XFCE4 desktop (debootstrap log )
- Kernel 3.4.43 (6416f0bf9e32d0950ba6f768ac20228ce8940a79) [Linaro 4.7]
- natively build MALI GPU drivers
- natively build OpenCV 2.4.5 libraries (C/C++ and Python2.7 support)
- with build-essential (e.g. compiler) and python packages

instructions:
- needs at least 2G microSD card
- extract *.img file using p7zip or 7zip,
   then use dd (Linux) or win32diskimager (Windows) to burn the image
- resize partitions (optional )
- root password: toor

notes:
- tested only on BC218; so the u-boot, script, and kernel may need to be modified to work for other boards)
- this Debian is intended only for opencv development, NOT for everyday use. There are other linux distro's that are more functional than this.
- no CedarX (VPU) libraries
- to keep the image size small: (1)there's no media player and no web browser included (wifi still works though); (2)remove docs, some locales, and /var/cache/ files.
- some kernel drivers in the default "sun4i_defconfig" were disabled. While, UVC, usb2serial, etc drivers were enabled for interfacing development.

--------------------------------------------------------------

update 06/09/13
Debian Wheezy armhf image V2
* with LXDE desktop
* apply some tweaks (may cause instability in the system!!!)
    - increase dram clock to 432MHz
    - increase default min cpu freq to 204MHz, default max to 1104MHz
    - use tmpfs for "tmp" and "log" folders
* re-build opencv libraries


If interested only on uboot and kernel files, here's the archive.
You may also need to mod the device by adding heatsink.










'yus

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