Using Zephyr

Developing directly in Zephyr will not be ultimately required for end-users who won’t touch the firmware running on BeagleConnect™ Freedom and will instead use the BeagleConnect™ Greybus functionality, but is important for early adopters as well as people looking to extend the functionality of the open source design. If you are one of those people, this is a good place to get started.

Equipment to begin development

There are many options, but using BeaglePlay gives a reasonable common environment. Please adjust as you see fit.

Required

• BeaglePlay with provided antennas

• BeagleConnect Freedom with provided USB cable

• 2x 5V/3A USB power adapters

• USB Type-C cable for use with BeaglePlay

Recommended

• Ethernet cable and Internet connection

Install the SDK on BeaglePlay

You can use BeaglePlay as the primary development board for setting up the Zephyr environment on BeagleConnect Freedom. To setup Zephyr on BeaglePlay, see Setup Zephyr development on BeaglePlay.

The instructions linked above setup the environment for targeting BeaglePlay’s on CC1352. We need to change it to target BeagleConnect Freedom. You can directly go on to Step 5 under Zephyr Setup for BeagleConnect Freedom.

Todo

note the tested version of software for BeaglePlay

Zephyr setup for BeagleConnect Freedom

To setup Zephyr on your machine for running modules on BeagleConnect Freedom, follow the given instructions :

1. First, install the Zephyr SDK bundle:

   cd ~
   wget https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/download/v0.15.1/zephyr-sdk-0.16.8_linux-aarch64_minimal.tar.gz
   wget -O - https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/download/v0.16.8/sha256.sum | shasum --check --ignore-missing
   

Note

Find the latest releases of the Zephyr SDK here. Change the version of the sdk according to your requirement. Also, you may replace <aarach64> with the host system you are currently working with.

2. Extract the Zephyr SDK bundle:

   tar xf zephyr-sdk-0.16.8_linux-aarch64_minimal.tar.gz
   

Note

It is recommended to extract the Zephyr SDK bundle at one of the following locations:

- $HOME
- $HOME/.local
- $HOME/.local/opt
- $HOME/bin
- /opt
- /usr/local

The Zephyr SDK bundle archive contains the <zephyr-sdk-<version> directory and, when extracted under <$HOME>, the resulting installation path will be <$HOME/zephyr-sdk-<version>.

3. Run the Zephyr SDK bundle setup script:

   cd zephyr-sdk-0.16.8
   ./setup.sh
   

4. Further, go on to setup the BeagleConnect Freedom (BCF)’s SDK.

   west init -m https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr --mr sdk zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk
   cd $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk
   python3 -m venv zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env
   

5. Export the required variables as given below:

   echo "export ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT=zephyr" >> $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env/bin/activate
   echo "export ZEPHYR_SDK_INSTALL_DIR=$HOME/zephyr-sdk-0.16.8" >> $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env/bin/activate
   echo "export ZEPHYR_BASE=$HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr" >> $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env/bin/activate
   echo 'export PATH=$HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr/scripts:$PATH' >> $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env/bin/activate
   echo "export BOARD=beagleplay" >> $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env/bin/activate
   source $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env/bin/activate
   west update
   west zephyr-export
   pip3 install -r zephyr/scripts/requirements-base.txt
   

Note

You might need to change the version of the Zephyr-SDK based on the SDK setup done in Step 1.

Try demo applications

Now you can build various Zephyr applications

Build and flash Blinky

Note

Before building any example, ensure to run this command:

source $HOME/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-sdk/zephyr-beagle-cc1352-env/bin/activate

Run the build and flash commands. Make sure to connect the BeagleConnect Freedom to your computer before flashing.

cd $ZEPHYR_BASE
west build zephyr/samples/basic/blinky
west flash

Zephyr Documentation

You can refer to Zephyr Getting Started for further development!

Debug applications over the serial terminal

Note

#TODO#