BeagleBone AI Eval

Update from 2024: the board was silently discontinued and vanished from earth, probably due to the various problems.

Images

• Best Image: am57xx eMMC flasher ubuntu console, 2 GB, https://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu#eMMC:_BeagleBoard-X15_and_BeagleBone_AI

• Better Image: am57xx eMMC flasher debian iot, 4 GB, https://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Debian_Buster_IOT_Snapshot - untested alternative: debian console, sub 1 GB

• Wrong Image: am57xx debian IoT am5729, 8 GB unpacked, http://beagleboard.org/latest-images

Install

• “boot” button is gone, but image flashes automatically (LED Larson-Scanner, until finished with copy, then static)

• ubuntu 18.04.4-console-armhf-2020-03-12

  • Warning: CPU gets very hot, even whole PCB, 66 °C idle, 77 °C after apt upgrade

  • takes about 1.2 GB of the 15 GB eMMC

  • dmesg reports 24.59 BogoMIPS (BBG shows 995?!?)

  • uname: 4.19.94-ti-r36

  • dd if=/dev/zero of=./testfile bs=100M count=1 oflag=direct ⇾ 73 MB/s (x3.5 of BBG)

  • GBE works with Cat 5e, 5m

  • 2nd AI shows “sudo hexdump -C /dev/mmcblk1boot1” ⇾ .U3.BBONE-AI00A1 | 1933EMAI000015 ⇾ board 15

• ansible: bootstrap, install, setup_linux_configuration, _performance, _security

  • uname: 4.19.94-ti-r51

  • uname: 5.4.24-armv7-x20 ⇾ not booting

Oddities

• some restarts are not coming back & there are random shutdowns

• cpu stays boiling hot, even with 99.6% idling, governor set to powersave, tested:

  • ubuntu 18.4.4 from elinux, with 4.19.94-r36 & r51

  • debian 10.4 iot from elinux, with 4.19.94-r41?

  • debian 10.4 console ⇾ does not even flash

  • debian 10.3 iot from bb.org with 4.19.94-r42

  • debian 9.12 console from elinux with 4.14.108-r134 stays at 50 deg ⇾ only one distro?!?

• ram only shows 578 MB ?!? it should be 1 Gig

  • DSP reserves 300 MB+

  • get ram back: https://groups.google.com/g/beagleboard/c/-kDcIPsLCkc/m/xHyrFKepAgAJ

• there is no device-tree overlay yet, just a big monolithic dts

• forum-post: it is easy to kill a cpu with wrong pin-inputs, https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/beagleboard&showsearch=true&showpopout=true&showtabs=false&hideforumtitle=true&parenturl=http%3A%2F%2Fbeagleboard.org%2Fdiscuss#!category-topic/beagleboard/beaglebone-ai/fzwYWLDrQJw

  • some pins are connected to two balls on the CPU, but io-use must be mutual exclusive

• PRU-Changes ⇾ ll /sys/class/remoteproc/ ⇾ remoteproc4 to remoteproc7

• addresses in RAM changed most likely as well

Documentation

• nice pin-overview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fE-AsDZvJ-bBwzNBj1_sPDrutvEvsmARqFwvbw_HkrE/edit#gid=1518010293

• nice to distinguish BB-Models: cat /proc/device-tree/model ⇾ BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone AI

• device tree is raw, see https://www.elinux.org/EBC_Exercise_41_Pin_Muxing_for_the_AI

  • AI.dts https://github.com/beagleboard/BeagleBoard-DeviceTrees/blob/v4.19.x-ti-overlays/src/arm/am5729-beagleboneai.dts

  • overlays, general: https://github.com/beagleboard/bb.org-overlays

• AI survival guide: https://www.element14.com/community/community/project14/visionthing/blog/2019/11/16/beagleboard-ai-brick-recovery-procedure

• AI reference manual: https://github.com/beagleboard/beaglebone-ai/wiki/System-Reference-Manual

  • says that out rev A1 is prototype, even A1a is alpha pilot run

• show temp from internal sensors: watch /opt/scripts/device/x15/test_thermal.sh

• included Processors

  • 2x cortex a15

  • 2x C66 DSP, FP VLIW with openCL, TMS320C66x

  • 4x Cortex-M4

  • 4x PRU

  • 4x EVE, embedded vision engines

  • dual core powerVR SGX544 3d GPU

  • vivante GC320 2D graphics accelerator

TODO

• save power

• turn off not needed processors,

• unload (lsmod) wifi, bt, media (videodev, v4l2), videobuf, vpdma, ti_csc

• apt: bb-node-red-installer