Getting Started with the i.MX 8M Mini EVKB

Camera and Interface

Visit i.MX 8 Camera Use Cases   to learn more about:

• The i.MX 8 MIPI CSI use cases
• Advanced Gstreamer camera use cases
• Available cameras and daughter cards supported by i.MX 8M Mini EVKB
• Compatible Device Trees (DTS) files
• How to enable different camera options on the i.MX 8M Mini EVKB

Connectivity

With Linux running on the i.MX board, you can evaluate special features that i.MX SoCs provide. This tutorial shows the step-by-step instructions on how to connect to the Internet on Linux with i.MX 8M Mini EVKB:

1. Connect an Ethernet cable to the board RJ-45 connector
2. Boot up the board and wait for the Linux prompt
3. At the Linux prompt, enter the following command

   1Copy# ifconfig eth0

4. Ping any site to corroborate functionality.

   12345Copy# ping 8.8.8.8 PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
   64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=119 time=4.81 ms 64 bytes
   from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=119 time=4.87 ms 64 bytes
   from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=119 time=4.94 ms 64 bytes
   from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=119 time=4.61 ms

Display

Visit i.MX 8M Mini EVK Display Selection Guide  to learn more about:

• i.MX 8M Mini EVKB mini-SAS connectors features
• Supported daughter cards
• How to change Device Tree (DTS) files or boot images
• Enabling different display options on the board

Simple Audio Example

Connect your earphone to the Audio Jack on the i.MX 8M Mini EVKB board.

If your earphone includes a microphone feature (TRRS with four contacts), do not push the microphone jack to the end. Leave one contact ring outside.

123456Copy# gst-launch-1.0 audiotestsrc ! alsasink
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
Redistribute latency...
Pipeline is PREROLLED ...
Setting pipeline to PLAYING ... New clock: GstAudioSinkClock

You should be able to listen a tone on the earphone.

When you are done with the tone, finish the command line by pressing kbd:[Ctrl+C]

This example is very simple. It shows the link between audiotestsrc and alsasink.

Decoder Video Audio

This example explains how to decode just the audio from a video file. Copy a video file to your /home/root/ on your SD card rootfs partition, boot the board from the SD card and run the command below:

Note: You can obtain the file used in the example for free from the Big Buck Bunny site.

12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546Copy# gplay-1.0 SampleVideo_1280x720_2mb.mp4
FSL_GPLAY2_01.00_LINUX build on Mar 12 2018 11:48:19
Set VideoSink kmssink
Set TextSink fakesink ====== AIUR: 4.3.4 build on Mar 12 2018 11:47:35. ======
Core: AVI_PARSER_03.05.29 build on Aug 31 2017 09:15:57
file: /usr/lib/imx-mm/parser/lib_avi_parser_arm_elinux.so.3.1
Track 00 [video]: Disabled
Codec: 4, SubCodec: 1
-----------------------
------------------------ Track 01 [audio_0] Enabled
Duration: 0:09:56.424000000
Language: und
Mime: audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)1, channels=(int)2, rate=(int)48000, bitrate=(int)0
codec_data=(buffer)014d401fffe10017674d401fda014016ec0440000003004000000c83c60ca801000468ef3c80
------------------------
====== BEEP: 4.3.4 build on Mar 12 2018 11:47:45. ======
Core: MP3 decoder Wrapper build on Jan 11 2018 10:20:25
file: /usr/lib/imx-mm/audio-codec/wrap/lib_mp3d_wrap_arm_elinux.so.3
CODEC: BLN_MAD-MMCODECS_MP3D_ARM_02.13.01_ARMV8 build on Jan 11 2018 10:05:45. [Stop (No Repeated)][Vol=1.0][00:00:00/00:09:56]=========== fsl_player_play()=========== FSL_GPLAY2_01.00_LINUX build on Mar 12 2018 11:48:19
[h]display the operation Help
[p]Play
[s]Stop
[e]Seek
[a]Pause when playing, play when paused
[v]Volume
[m]Switch to mute or not
[>]Play next file
[ [r]Switch to repeated mode or not
[u]Select the video track
[d]Select the audio track
[b]Select the subtitle track
[f]Set full screen
[z]resize the width and height
[t]Rotate
[c]Setting play rate
[i]Display the metadata
[x]eXit
State changed: buffering
State changed: playing
[Playing (No Repeated)][Vol =1.0][00:00:13/00:00:13]EOS Found
getNextItem No next item!
No more media file, exit gplay!
State changed: stopped
Exit display thread
FSL_PLAYER_UI_MSG_EXIT
fsl_player_deinit

GStreamer

Visit i.MX 8 Gstreamer User Guide  to learn more about how to use GStreamer version 1.0 on the i.MX 8M Mini EVKB.

The community post also includes the following:

• Decode examples
• Encode examples
• Camera examples
• Video composition
• Video scaling and rotation

Power Consumption

The i.MX 8M Mini Power Consumption Measurement application note helps developers design power management system.

This application note also illustrates the following:

• Current drain measurements for the i.MX 8M Mini applications processors
• Power supply domains
• Use case configurations and guidelines
• Expected processor power consumption for various use cases
• Reducing power consumption

Power Management

With Linux running on the i.MX board, you can evaluate special features that i.MX SoCs provide. This example shows how to suspend to low-power modes and resuming to normal operation.

1. Enter the command below in order to enable serial TTY as a wake up source for the board:

   1Copy# echo enabled > /sys/class/tty/ttymxc0/power/wakeup

2. Enter the command below to enter Suspend-To-RAM mode:

1234567Copy# echo mem > /sys/power/state
PM: suspend entry (deep)
PM: Syncing filesystems ... done.
Freezing user space processes ... (elapsed 0.001 seconds) done.
OOM killer disabled.
Freezing remaining freezable tasks ... (elapsed 0.000 seconds) done.
Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug)

3. Press the SW901 switch to wake-up the board. The following messages should appear on terminal:

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930CopyHIFsuspendwow TODO
PM: suspend devices took 0.112 seconds
Disabling non-boot CPUs ...
CPU1: shutdown
psci: CPU1 killed.
CPU2: shutdown
psci: CPU2 killed.
CPU3: shutdown
psci: Retrying again to check for CPU kill
psci: CPU3 killed.
Enabling non-boot CPUs ...
Detected VIPT I-cache on CPU1
GICv3: CPU1: found redistributor 1 region 0:0x00000000388a0000
CPU1: Booted secondary processor [410fd034]
cache: parent cpu1 should not be sleeping
CPU1 is up
Detected VIPT I-cache on CPU2
GICv3: CPU2: found redistributor 2 region 0:0x00000000388c0000
CPU2: Booted secondary processor [410fd034]
cache: parent cpu2 should not be sleeping
CPU2 is up
Detected VIPT I-cache on CPU3
GICv3: CPU3: found redistributor 3 region 0:0x00000000388e0000
CPU3: Booted secondary processor [410fd034]
cache: parent cpu3 should not be sleeping
CPU3 is up
PM: resume devices took 0.028 seconds
OOM killer enabled.
Restarting tasks ... done.
PM: suspend exit

CAAM and CryptoDev

As many of the i.MX NXP processors, i.MX 8M Mini EVKB board. includes the Cryptographic Acceleration And Assurance Module CAAM module that can be used through CryptoDev in order to accelerate by hardware the encryption and decryption process. It is recommended to use this module when working with large amounts of data or in any application where performance is important.

Checking the Speed Performance

• OpenSSL is an open source project that defines the security protocols SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security). It has a software library that can be used in applications that requires a secure information transmission in order to prevent eavesdropping.
• OpenSSL includes a speed command that tests the encryption performance for a desired encryption algorithm. For this example the algorithm used is the aes-128-cbc that implements the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption algorithm, with a Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode of operation and 128 bits block.

The OpenSSL speed test can be seen using the following command:

123456789101112Copy# openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 43389139 aes-128-cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 28788614 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 11766741 aes-128-cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 3674139 aes-128-cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 495157 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s
OpenSSL 1.0.2p 14 Aug 2018
built on: reproducible build, date unspecified
options:bn(64,64) rc4(ptr,char) des(idx,cisc,16,int) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: arm-poky-linux-gnueabi-gcc -march=armv7ve -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=hard -mcpu=cortex-a7 -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -O2 -pipe -g -feliminate-unused-debug-types -Wall -Wa,--noexecstack -DHAVE_CRYPTODEV -DUSE_CRYPTODEV_DIGESTS
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc 232182.68k 614157.10k 1007453.41k 1258300.45k 1352108.71k

The encryption algorithms supported by the CryptoDev can be listed by the following command:

123Copy# openssl engine cryptodev -c
(cryptodev) BSD cryptodev engine
[RSA, DSA, DH, DES-CBC, DES-EDE3-CBC, AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, AES-256-CBC, BF-CBC, hmacWithMD5, hmacWithSHA1, RIPEMD160, MD5, SHA1]

Helpful Application Notes

i.MX Encrypted Storage Using CAAM Secure Keys

This application note provides steps to run a transparent storage encryption at block level using DM-Crypt taking advantage of the secure key feature provided by i.MXs Cryptographic Accelerator and Assurance Module (CAAM).

Enhanced OpenSSL on i.MX 8M and i.MX 8M Mini

This application note describes how to add support for accelerated OP-TEE OS with Cryptographic Accelerator and Assurance Module (CAAM) on top of OpenSSL. The final result being an enhanced OpenSSL capable of accelerating crypto algorithms in a secure way via OP-TEE.

Serial Communication Console Setup

On the command prompt of the Linux host machine, run the following command to determine the port number:

1Copy $ ls /dev/ttyUSB* 

The smaller number is for Arm® Cortex®-A53 core and the bigger number is for Arm® Cortex®-M4 core.

Minicom

Use the following commands to install and run the serial communication program (minicom as an example):

• Install Minicom using Ubuntu package manager

  1Copy $ sudo apt-get install minicom 

• Launch Minicom using a console window using the port number determined earlier

  1Copy $ sudo minicom /dev/ttyUSB* -s 

• Configure Minicom as shown in Figure 3

  Figure 3. Minicom Configuration.

• The next step is to Connect the HDMI cable

Serial Communication Console Setup

The FTDI USB-serial chip on i.MX8MQuad enumerates two serial ports. Assume that the ports are COM9 and COM10. The smaller numbered port ( COM9) is for the serial console communication from Arm® Cortex®-A53 and the larger numbered port (COM10) is for Arm® Cortex®-M4 core. The serial-to-USB drivers are available at Virtual COM Port Drivers .

Note: To determine the port number of the i.MX board virtual COM port, open the Windows device manager and find USB serial Port in Ports (COM and LPT).

Tera Term

Is an open source terminal emulation application. This program displays the information sent from the NXP development platform’s virtual serial port.

• Download Tera Term . After the download, run the installer and then return to this webpage to continue
• Launch TeraTerm. The first time it launches, it shows the following dialog. Select the serial option. Assuming your board is plugged in, there should be a COM port automatically populated in the list
• Configure the serial port settings (using the COM port number identified earlier) to 115200 baud rate, 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit. To do this, go to Setup → Serial Port and change the settings
• Verify that the connection is open. If connected, Tera Term shows something like below in its title bar
• The next step is to Connect the HDMI cable

Serial Communication Console Setup

The FTDI USB-serial chip on i.MX8MQuad enumerates two serial ports. Assume that the ports are COM9 and COM10. The smaller numbered port (COM9) is for the serial console communication from Arm® Cortex®-A53 and the larger numbered port (COM10) is for Arm® Cortex®-M4. The serial-to-USB drivers are available at VCP Drivers .

Note: To determine the port number of the i.MX board virtual COM port, open the Windows device manager and find USB serial Port in Ports (COM and LPT)

PuTTY is a popular terminal-emulation application. This program displays the information sent from the NXP development platform’s virtual serial port.

• Download PuTTY After the download, run the installer and then return to this webpage to continue
• Launch PuTTY by either double clicking on the executable file you downloaded or from the Start menu, depending on the type of download you selected
• Configure In the window that launches. Select the Serial radio button and enter the COM port number that you determined earlier. Also enter the baud rate, in this case 115200

• Click Open to open the serial connection. Assuming the board is connected and you entered the correct COM port, the terminal window opens. If the configuration is not correct, PuTTY alerts you
• The next step is to Connect the HDMI cable

Boot Switch Setup

The boot sequence is detailed in the i.MX 8M Mini Reference Manual. In short, the boot modes of the i.MX boards are controlled by the boot configuration switches.

The switches set the boot media (depending on board, i.e. SD card, eMMC, NAND), the serial download protocol mode (SDP) or the value set on eFuses.

The SDP is also the fallback for the boot media, in other words, when the switches are configured to boot from SD card but the SD card slot is empty, or the SD card binary content is not bootable, the boot sequence continues to the SDP boot.

Figure 4. Boot switch setup.

The following table lists the boot switch settings on the i.MX 8M Mini EVK board. The same information can be found on i.MX 8M Mini Reference Manual and on silkscreen on the board near the switches.

Table 1. Boot modes available for i.MX 8M Mini LPDDR4 EVKB.

Note: Make sure the boot switch is configured to boot from eMMC.

Note: 1 = ON; 0 = OFF; X = Don't Care.

Board Documents

• i.MX 8M Mini Hardware User's Guide
• i.MX 8M Mini Evaluation Kit DDR4 Design Files
• i.MX 8M Mini Evaluation Kit LPDDR4 Design Files

Chip Documents

• i.MX 8M Mini Applications Processor Data Sheet for Industrial Products
• i.MX 8M Mini Applications Processor Data Sheet for Consumer Products
• i.MX 8M Mini Applications Processor Reference Manual

Software

• i.MX Software - Android
• i.MX Software - Linux
• Windows 10 IoT Core
• MCUXpresso SDK

Training

Want to learn more about using the i.MX 8M Mini? Check out our selection of training offerings ranging from online mini tech sessions to hands-on deep-dive training for help.

Silicon and board-related training

Forums

Connect with other engineers and get expert advice on designing with the i.MX 8M Mini Application Processor on one of our community sites.

• i.MX 8M Mini Community
• i.MX Processors Community