BeagleBoard/GSoC/2019 Projects

Links

 * Status reports: http://bbb.io/gsocml
 * Live chat: http://bbb.io/gsocchat
 * Google GSoC site: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
 * YouTube Playlist BeagleBoard.org GSoC 2019: TBD

Weekly reports
All weekly reports will be sent to the mailing list (as that is our primary support venue outside of live chat) on a single thread (to avoid e-mail thrash).

They must be sent on Monday to allow for mentors to respond ahead of Wednesdays IRC meeting where all blockers will be discussed live.

They must include the following sections:
 * Accomplishments
 * Resolutions to blockers
 * On-going blockers
 * Plans for the next week

Greybus
Click boards are a flagship hardware product line of MikroElektronika with over 600 add-on boards ranging from wireless connectivity clicks to Human Machine Interface clicks for interfacing with peripheral sensors or transceivers. Most of the Click boards use the common protocols like SPI,I2C or UART to communicate with the Beaglebone and thus the support for them now is accomplished via device tree overlays via the bb.org-overlays repository. This requires /boot/uEnv.txt to be modified to load the drivers at boot, requiring at least one reboot to enable the support in a potentially error-prone way.

The Greybus Simulator is a tool which simulates an AP Bridge, SVC, and an arbitrary set of modules plugged into Greybus. Greybus already provides most of the interfaces used on click boards and utilizes manifest files to enumerate hardware at run-time. This project aims to enable Click Board Support via Greybus Simulator by writing suitable Manifests according to the Click board Specifications and by simply copying the manifest to a hotplug-directory a click board can be loaded, which would make the interfacing a lot easier.

Milestones

 * 1) Working gbsim and OLEDC Click
 * 2) Working 9DOF Click, documentation for I2C manifests
 * 3) Working Weather Click, video demonstration of all functionality
 * 4) Documentation for SPI manifests, working OLEDB and microSD Clicks
 * 5) Update milestones based on community feedback, working ETH and ETH Wiz Clicks
 * 6) Working RTC6 Click
 * 7) Working Temp/Humidity (not tested on Hardware) and Waveform Generator Clicks
 * 8) Makecode Integration
 * 9) New video demonstration of all functionality, update milestones based on community feedback
 * 10) Working GNSS4, GNSS5 and Ultrasonic2 Clicks
 * 11) Working insclick/rmclick utilities, on-line documentation for supported Clicks, video demonstration of utilities, OS image integration
 * 12) Examples to get started with supported clicks
 * 13) Documentation and final video demonstration

PRU API
This project aims to provide an API for different programming languages to load/unload firmware and communicate with the PRUs from User Space. A GUI application that runs on the terminal will also be provided for debugging the PRUs step by step.

Milestones

 * Added bindings to communicate with the python daemon service using C.
 * Functions added in 'prussd.py' to read and write to the PRU SRAM, DRAM0, DRAM1 through the '/dev/mem' character device file.
 * Documented the process of using RPMsg according to the latest kernel, using SWIG for generating language bindings (according to the functions written in cpp), and about the PRU memory.
 * Generated software PWM signal with frequency upto 1MHz to demonstrate usage of the API.
 * Added functionality in daemon to send data to the PRU in the form of raw integers.
 * Demonstrated 4-channel software PWM - accuracy can be improved.
 * PRU firmware written with userspace program to accurately control stepper motors using RPMsg for data transfer.

Xen
The idea behind the project is to make Xen hypervisor available and easy to use on beagleboard-x15. This implementation will allow users to experiment on embedded virtualization and in related fields like automotive, critical systems prototyping and processor's resources sharing. It might also provide very interesting possibilities for heterogeneous resources' utilization. The most interesting outcome is the availability of open-source virtualization on top of the open-source hardware.

PRU Bus
The idea behind this project is to create a hardware/software design incorporated with shift registers to allow BB.org hardware to communicate with hardware via a parallel, bidirectional bus.To create a software design that incorporates both a kernel driver to communicate with the parallel bus and a user space application/library using ioctl calls to communicate with this kernel driver.

It will benefits to those people who want multiple inputs or output capability in their projects or those who want to interface different memory device with the beaglebone.org hardware. it also opens new capability by open an entire world of a new project that can get incorporated with the help of pocket beagle for ex. making a scientific calculator with the help of it, etc.