ECE497 Instructor's Guide

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Revision as of 07:57, 3 March 2011 by Yoder (talk | contribs) (Which Linux)
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There are many choices that have to be made when designing a college course. The open source world gives you even more choices. The following takes you down the path I have chosen for my 32-bit embedded Linux course (ECE497 - 32-bit Embedded Linux, Rose-Hulman). As we travel I'll point out what decisions needed to be made, what the options were and why I made my choice. Once you see where I've taken you, it should be easier for you to pick a path for your class.

What Hardware

There are many hardware platforms out there that support embedded Linux, how do you pick one? In my case, Texas Instruments (TI) approached me and asked if I was interested in developing materials using the BeagleBoard. I looked it over and said yes. It's not a bad choice since nearly 30,000 have bee sold and it has a very active community.

The Beagle has a dual-core OMAP processor on it. One core is an ARM processor, the other a TI DSP. So one can work in both the embedded world and the DSP world with it.

What Software

Bare Metal, or Linux

Since the Beagle has both an ARM and a DSP, you could choose to focus on either. If you main interest is DSP and you want to approach the Beagle as traditional DSP hardware I suggest you contact Mike Marrow. He has pioneering the 'bare metal' approach to using an OMAP processor.

I decided to focus on Linux running on the ARM and treat the DSP as a peripheral. I think in the future this is how most DSP hardware will be used.

Which Linux

Linux has many embedded distributions. There seem to be three that are most active on the Beagle at this time.

I use Angstrom. The day I tried to install Ubuntu on the Beagle xM I discovered the instructions didn't work for the xM. They might be working now. I have Android installed on one of my SD cards and have played with it some. Although Android is based on Linux, I found Angstrom to be a more familiar environment. You mileage may vary.

Which OS for the Host Computer

The BeagleBoard is powerful enough that real development (editing, compiling, etc.) can be done on it without need of another computer. However, so can do much more using a host computer for development. It is generally agreed that if your target computer is Linux, the host computer should be too.

So which distro should you use? I'm running Ubuntu 10.4 LTS, 32-bit. It is required for some of the DSP development tools supplied by TI. The LTS means Long Term Support, which means it's supported for 3 years from its release data (April 2010). This also means you won't be having to upgrade every time you teach the class.

Native or Virtual Install

Windows is the standard OS on my campus, so the first year I ran the course I ran the host OS in a virtual machine. It worked fine, though there may have been a slight loss of performance. I started with the free VMware Player, but later switched to the free Virtual Box on the recommendation of my students.

This year I'm running Ubuntu native on a desktop and a laptop. One of the things I gain is the desktop is always on so I can login to remotely and do things such as start a long download. I share the keyboard and mouse with my Windows machine by using Synergy. Synergy allows cutting and pasting machines which helps when producing handouts.