HummingBoard Ripple & RZ/G2UL SOM Quick Start Guide

hb-ripple-rzg2lc.png

Introduction

The following quick start guide provides background information about the HummingBoard RZ/G2UL.

The guide will give a technical overview about the product and by the end of it you should be able to boot an operating system and begin testing your application.

Revision and Notes

Hardware Setup

Product specifications

 

HUMMINGBOARD RZ/G2UL

 

HUMMINGBOARD RZ/G2UL

I/Os

2 x USB 2.0

1 x MIPI-CSI-2

Networking

1 x Ethernet 100BASE-T

1 x 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi and Bluetooth (2.4 GHz)

Processor

Renesas RZ/G2UL Single MPcore Arm Cortex A55 up to 1.0GHz + Cortex M33 200MHz

Memory & Storage

Up to 2 GB DDR4
8GB eMMC up to 64 GB
MicroSD

Display

None

Misc.

1 x Reset button
1 x Configurable button
3 x LED indicators
RTC

Development and Debug interfaces

Micro USB

Power

7V – 36V

Expansion card I/Os

mikroBUS header
Mini Pcie with SIM holder

Temperature

Commercial: 0°C to 70°C
Industrial: -40°C to 85°C

Dimensions

PCBA: 100 x 70mm
Enclosure: 120 x 80 x 30mm

Enclosure

Extruded aluminium

 

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Block Diagram

The following figure describes the RZ/G2UL Block Diagram.

image-20240205-113315.png

 

Visual features overview

Please see below the features overview of the connector side of the HummingBoard Ripple & RZ/G2UL.

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Print side connector overview of the HummingBoard Ripple & RZ/G2UL.

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Software Setup

Cable setup and prerequisites

Here is what you will need to power up and use the board:

  • Linux or Windows PC

  • HummingBoard Ripple with RZ/G2UL SOM (HummingBoard RZ/G2UL)

  • 12V Power adapter (HummingBoard Ripple has wide range input of 7V-36V, it is recommended to use 12V power adapter).

  • Micro USB to USB for console, the HummingBoard Ripple has an onboard FTDI chip.

  • IP router or IP switch

  • USB Disk and SD Card

Boot Select

Before powering up the board for the first time it is recommended to select the boot media. In order to configure the boot media, please refer to HummingBoard RZ/G2UL Boot Select .

eMMC and SD connect to the same SDIO signals via MUX so we can’t have access to the SD & eMMC at the same time, select eMMC/SD by setting switch S3{6} → off : eMMC , on : SD

Generating Yocto, Buildroot and Debian image

Buildroot/Debian

  1. Clone the repository rz-g2ul_build and move your terminal to this directory.

  2. In this stage you can modify your image configs as you want, you can find more info about it the the repository.

  3. Build your own image by this command

    $ MACHINE=rzg2ul-hummingboard Distro=<Buildroot/Debian> ./runme.sh

Yocto <TBD - Comig Soon>

  1. Clone the repository from the “List of supported OS” link and move your terminal to this directory.

  2. Download the layers by this command

    $ repo init -u https://github.com/SolidRun/meta-solidrun-arm-rzg2lc.git -b dunfell -m meta-solidrun-arm-rzg2lc.xml $ repo sync
  3. In this stage you can modify your image configs as you want, you can find more info about it the the repository.

  4. For graphics support you need to explore in the readme file in the github and follow the instructions of this utility.

  5. Set the environment of the image that going to be build by this command

    $ TEMPLATECONF=$PWD/meta-solidrun-arm-rzg2lc/docs/template/conf/rzg2lc-solidrun source poky/oe-init-build-env build
  6. Build your own Yocto image by this command

    $ MACHINE=rzg2ul-hummingboard bitbake <target>
    • NOTE: Choose your relevant target, for example:
      -core-image-bsp: cli image.
      -core-image-weston: graphical image.
      -core-image-qt: graphical image including qt.

Booting from SD card

The following shows how to set the switches on the boot source selector:

image-20221123-220813.png

Please Note:

The black rectangle represents the switch position.

Once you set the switches, you can apply the following for booting from SD card:

  1. Downloading the image
    Download the image (for example Debian) by running the following command on your Linux/Windows PC:

    wget https://solid-run-images.sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/RZ/rzg2lc_build/20231122-6391518/rzg2lc-solidrun-sd-debian-6391518.img.xz
  2. Writing the image to the SD card
    Use the following commands for writing the image to an SD card:

    xz -dc rzg2ul-solidrun-sd-debian-6391518.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4k conv=fdatasync
    • For more information, please visit Flashing an SD Card .

    • Note: Plug a micro SD into your Linux PC, the following assumes that the USB-Disk / Micro-SD is added as /dev/sdX and all it’s partitions are unmounted.

    • Note: You can use the following command for writing to the SD in case you generated your own image:

      $ sudo dd if=/your/image/path of=/dev/sdX bs=4k conv=fdatasync
  3. SD card insertion
    Please Insert the SD card into your device.

  4. Power connection
    Connect your power adaptor to the DC jack, and then connect the adaptor to mains supply.

  5. Power On
    Hold on the On/Off Power button - SW1 (as shown in the figure below)

    image-20230228-151346.png
    • Note: The system should turn on by default when the power is connected (without pressing the button).

  6. Serial Connection
    Please insert the micro USB into your device, then you can refer to Serial Connection for installing necessary serial connection software in Linux/Windows.
    Once you installed the necessary serial connection software, you should be able to see the following:

image-20231127-133436.png
  • Enter “root” in the login like the above example and then you can move on to use the device.

Final stages

The following stages need to be done in order to finalise the imaging:

  1. Run fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 if using SD or eMMC.

  2. Recreate the rootfs partition (mostly the second partition) by deleting it and then creating a new partition that starts at the next sector after the first one and extends to the end of the drive (or less depending on your needs).

  3. Write the new partition, when prompt about ‘Do you want to remove the signature?’ then answer with Yes.

  4. Run resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2 if using SD Card or eMMC.

  5. In this stage the root partition should be big enough to start populating it; but first update the RTC clock.

  6. Connect the RJ45 to your network with internet access (and DHCP server); and then run dhclient.

  7. Update the RTC clock by running ntpdate pool.ntp.org and then hwclock -w.

  8. Run apt-update commands below and then populate the root filesystem as you wish.

$ apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

Here is an example of the process until the 3rd step (include):

image-20231206-093535.png

After those steps you should end the process in this way (step 4 to the end):

image-20231206-094407.png

In the end you should see with “lsblk” that the partition size is in the required size.

More Features

RZ/G2UL SOM does not support a Display port interface, so Debian GUI is not relevant for this product.

List Of Supported OS

OS

 

OS

 

 Debian

 RZ/G2LC Yocto

Buildroot

Build from source

Documentation