In July, Feescale released its new ARM Cortex-A7 based low-power processor I.MX 6UL, which is targeted at applications such as in-vehicle information processing, home energy management systems, industrial control, and Internet of Things gateways. It has scalability, high performance and low power consumption. It is currently active in the automotive, consumer electronics, industrial, medical/health care and other fields.
1, MCIMX6UL-EVK development board
2, 1 power adapter
3. Two MicroUSB cables
4. A network cable
5. A MicroSD card
6. Mouse
7. Keyboard
8, LCD display, model LCD8000-43T
1, MCIMX6UL-BB base plate evaluation First of all, we look at the base plate MCIMX6UL-BB, the base plate uses a 4-layer board design, the size of 13.0cm x 10.8cm, the interface on the board is still very rich. Bottom plate MCIMX6UL-BB Onboard: 1, LCD expansion connector 2, HDMI connector (unmounted HDMI transmitter chip 3, audio codec circuit (including 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone input, left and right speaker output) 4, a USB2.0 MicroUSB OTG connector 5, One USB2.0 USB HOST port 6, two Ethernet (10/100T) connectors 7, dual CAN connector 8, SD/ SDIO port 9, parallel camera port 10, Sensor: Freescale MAG3110 electronic compass, Freescale FXLS8471Q accelerometer, gyroscope (unattached) 11, 20pin standard JTAG connector 12, UART-To-Micro USB interface 13, The distribution of Arduino expansion interface MCIMX6UL-BB board card is still very clear. However, because the board is equipped with two MciroUSB interfaces, one of which is serial port to USB, and the other is USB OTG interface, it is necessary to distinguish clearly when using serial port and downloading function. It will be used later in the process of downloading the software.
MCIMX6UL-CM Core board Evaluation The core board MCIMX6UL-CM is also a four-layer board design, the size of 6.76 cm x 4.24 cm, the on-board I.mX6 Ultralite application processor nearly 300 feet, only with 4 layers of board can be designed. Core board MCIMX6UL-CM Onboard: 1, I.MX6 Ultralite application processor 2, split power supply circuit 3, 4Gb DDR3L SDRAM4, 256 Mb quad-channel SPI Flash/NAND Flash (unattached) 5, MicroSD connector /eMMC (unmountable) core board MCIMX6UL-CM looks relatively few, in addition to the i.MX6UltraLite application processor, the core on-board storage expansion has been made compatible design, you can choose SPI FLASH or NAND Flash, MicroSD card or eMMC can be selected, and the default configuration of the board is a combination of SPI FLASH and MicroSD card.
i.MX6UltraLite Application Processor Evaluation The application processor installed on the MCIMX6UL-EVK development board is PCIMX6G2CVM05AA, which adopts the BGA 14mm*14mm package. This is Freescale's first i.MX6 series chip based on the ARM Cortex-A7 processor, which is single-core and has a maximum of 528MHz, as shown in the figure below. The hardware system block diagram of the chip is as follows: The characteristics of the I.MX 6Ultralite are as follows: 1, based on ARM Cortex-A7 processor, the maximum frequency is 528MHz, supports 128 KB two-level cache 2, supports parallel LCD display, Up to WXGA (1366×768) resolution 3, support 8/10/16/24-bit parallel camera sensor interface 3, support 16-bit LP-DDR2, DDR3/ DDR3L4, supporting 8-bit / 16-bit parallel NOR FLASH/ PSRAM5, dual-channel Quad-SPI NOR FLASH6, supporting 8-bit NAND FLASH (40-bit ECC) 7, 2 MMC4.4/3.0 SD/ SDIO ports 8, 2 USB2.0 OTG, HS/ FS, support from device or host mode 9, audio interface: 3 I2S/ SAI, S/ PDIF Tx/Rx10,2 10/100 Ethernet, support IEEE1588 standard 11, 2 12-bit ADCs, up to 10 input channels, including resistive touch controller (4-wire / 5-wire) 12, integrated PMU unit 13, Security module: True number generator, encryption engine (AES/ TDES/ SHA/ RSA), tamper-proof monitor14, secure startup, SIMV2/ EVMSIM X 2, OTF DRAM encryption, PCI4.0 pre-certification. Several of the features of the Ultralite are still very much worth looking forward to. The Cortex-A9 series, while maintaining the same performance, can reduce power consumption by about 50%, low power. Also worth mentioning is the security features of I.MX 6Ultralite, which integrates numerous encryption functions
1) The MCIMX6UL-EVK development board did not burn the system when it was out, so we must first burn the system before use, the system will be burned to the MicroSD card through the USB OTG interface, preparation work is as follows: 1, prepare a power adapter, the author used here is 5V/2A2, two MicroUSB cables (one for burning the system, the other can view the system burning LOG and startup information) 3, a network cable, a MicroSD card and other peripheral accessories such as mouse, keyboard 4, a liquid crystal display screen, The model is LCD8000-43T (this can be purchased at the Intech official website) Download the software support package BSP of the MCIMX6UL-EVK development board from the Freescale official website, marked in the following figure, including the download tool and the system image, the system is based on Linux customized Yocto system. After downloading, unzip, and then need to follow the instructions of the user guide to complete the following operations, here to start the system through the MicroSD card, we must open the corresponding download file mfgtool2-yocto-mx-evk-sdcard-sd2.vbs, as shown in the following picture. 2) Before downloading, remember to insert the MicroSD card into the core board, and switch the mode dip switch on the core board to the corresponding designated position. 3) During the download process, we can observe the Log burned by the system through the UART-TO-USB interface. When the writing is complete, whether the software or the system LOG is printed, a success message will be displayed. 4) Power off the board, restore the default dip switch Settings, connect the corresponding accessories to power on and start, if there is a screen, you can intuitively see the startup screen, engineers without screens can also view the system through the UART-TO-USB interface, the following is through the Intek LCD8000-43T LCD screen to view the system. 5) The officially provided system is a customized Yocto project based on the linux kernel. 6) After entering the system, a problem was found, the resistance screen touch sensing has serious errors, it seems not calibrated, so it is best to connect the mouse operation, enter the touch calibration interface to recalibrate once, you can directly enjoy the Yocto project through touch after completion. 7) The author probably tested the basic functions on the board, Ethernet communication, USB communication, audio circuit, etc., the functions can be used normally, but if the engineer needs to use it directly in the project, it needs to be further optimized. The following figure is the Ethernet function: The following figure is the song played through the on-board audio circuit: