Setting Up the Vybrid VF6 SOM TWR Starter Kit Print


This note explains how to set up the VF6 System-On-Module (SOM) TWR Starter Kit hardware. The kit makes use of a Freescale Tower-compatible development baseboard (TWR-VF6-SOM-BSB), which allows using it as part of the modular Freescale Tower System development platform.

As shipped by Emcraft, the kit includes the following hardware components:

  1. VF6 SOM 2ETH;
  2. TWR-VF6-SOM-BSB baseboard;
  3. Mini-USB cable UART/power interface.

The VF6 SOM TWR Starter Kit provides the following hardware components and interfaces:

The following default configuration of the on-board jumpers is recommended:

Jumper Configuration Notes
JP1 1-2 closed, 3-4 closed To enable power on the VF6 SOM (VCC3) and save the battery life when the mini-USB is connected.
JP2 All pins open (SAI2 is not looped) Used for local looping of the Vybrid SAI2 interface.
JP3 1-3 open, 2-4 closed To use the mini-USB port as the power source.
JP4 1-2 open (USB1 connected to the P5 USB connector),
3-4 closed,
7-8 closed(UART2 connected to the USB-UART bridge (U1) and available on the P1 USB connector)		 Controls routing of the Vybrid USB1 interface. Controls routing of the Vybrid UART2 interface.


To power the kit up, simply connect it to a PC / notebook by plugging a mini-USB cable into the P1 mini-USB connector on the TWR-VF6-SOM-BSB baseboard. As soon as the connection to the PC has been made, the LED DS2 should lit up, indicating that the board is up and running.

On the PC host side, the U-Boot/Linux and MQX consoles are available via the P1 dual port UART/USB connector. The software installed on the VF6 SOM configures both serial consoles for a 115.2 Kbs terminal.

On some Linux distributions, connecting to the dual port UART/USB device causes the Modem Manager package to try opening the TTY device and sending modem commands to it, thus occupying the port. To avoid this effect, the ModemManager package must be disabled on the host with the following command:

$ sudo mv /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.ModemManager.service
/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.ModemManager.service.disabled

On the Linux host, the dmesg command can be used to figure out the TTY devices corresponding to the two serial consoles:

$ dmesg | tail
[495846.154337] cp210x 1-5.1.5:1.0: cp210x converter detected
[495846.216898] usb 1-5.1.5: reset full-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
[495846.292179] usb 1-5.1.5: cp210x converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[495846.292643] usb 1-5.1.5: cp210x converter now attached to ttyUSB1

The U-Boot/Linux serial console is available on the second USB TTY device. For example:

$ picocom –l /dev/ttyUSB1 –b 115200

The MQX serial console is available on the first USB TTY device. For example:

$ picocom –l /dev/ttyUSB0 –b 115200

To provide network connectivity to the board, connect it into your LAN by plugging a standard Ethernet cable into the lower slot of the dual-port Ethernet connector. The board is pre-configured with an IP address of 192.168.0.2.

Note that the kit does not include any JTAG tools or associated hardware items. The VF6 SOM comes preloaded with the U-Boot firmware. U-Boot supports loading Linux images from TFTP or Flash providing a sufficient development and deployment environment for the Linux OS. Should you require updating the U-Boot firmware itself, U-Boot supports a self-upgrade capability through loading an image from TFTP and installing it to the integrated Flash of the Vybrid. The implications of the above is that you do not really need JTAG tools unless you intend to use an RTOS other than Linux or have installed a faulty U-Boot image to the VF6-SOM. If for some reason you require JTAG tools, you will have to obtain any such equipement and associated software separately, directly from respective vendors.