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Tinker Board

The ASUS Tinker Board is a single board SoC computer based on the Rockchip RK3288 processor. It has built-in GPIO, PWM, SPI, and I2C interfaces.

For more info about the Tinker Board, go to https://www.asus.com/uk/Single-Board-Computer/Tinker-Board/.

How to Install

Tested OS:

Debian TinkerOS
armbian with Debian or Ubuntu

The latest "Tinker Board Debian 10 V3.0.11" is official discontinued. Nevertheless it is well tested with gobot. There is a known i2c issue with the Kernel 4.4.194 if using block reads. armbian is known to work in this area.

You would normally install Go and Gobot on your workstation. Once installed, cross compile your program on your workstation, transfer the final executable to your Tinker Board, and run the program on the Tinker Board as documented here.

go get -d -u gobot.io/x/gobot/...

System access and configuration basics

Some configuration steps are needed to enable drivers and simplify the interaction with your Tinker Board. Once your Tinker Board has been configured, you do not need to do so again.

Note that these configuration steps must be performed on the Tinker Board itself. The easiest is to login to the Tinker Board via SSH (option "-4" is used to force IPv4, which is needed for some versions of TinkerOS):

ssh -4 linaro@192.168.1.xxx

Enabling hardware drivers

Not all drivers are enabled by default. You can have a look at the configuration file, to find out what is enabled at your system:

cat /boot/config.txt

This file can be modified by "vi" or "nano", it is self explanatory:

sudo vi /boot/config.txt

Newer versions of Tinker Board provide an user interface for configuration with:

sudo tinker-config

After configuration was changed, an reboot is necessary.

sudo reboot

Enabling GPIO pins

Create a group "gpio"

Create a Linux group named "gpio" by running the following command:

sudo groupadd -f --system gpio

If you already have a "gpio" group, you can skip to the next step.

Add the "linaro" user to the new "gpio" group

Add the user "linaro" to be a member of the Linux group named "gpio" by running the following command:

sudo usermod -a -G gpio linaro

If you already have added the "gpio" group, you can skip to the next step.

Add a "udev" rules file for gpio

Create a new "udev" rules file for the GPIO on the Tinker Board by running the following command:

sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/91-gpio.rules

And add the following contents to the file:

SUBSYSTEM=="gpio", KERNEL=="gpiochip*", ACTION=="add", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'chown root:gpio /sys/class/gpio/export /sys/class/gpio/unexport ; chmod 220 /sys/class/gpio/export /sys/class/gpio/unexport'"
SUBSYSTEM=="gpio", KERNEL=="gpio*", ACTION=="add", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'chown root:gpio /sys%p/active_low /sys%p/direction /sys%p/edge /sys%p/value ; chmod 660 /sys%p/active_low /sys%p/direction /sys%p/edge /sys%p/value'"

Press the "Esc" key, then press the ":" key and then the "q" key, and then press the "Enter" key. This should save your file. After rebooting your Tinker Board, you should be able to run your Gobot code that uses GPIO.

Enabling I2C

Create a group "i2c"

If you already have a "i2c" group, you can skip to the next step.

Create a Linux group named "i2c" by running the following command:

sudo groupadd -f --system i2c

Add the "linaro" user to the new "i2c" group

If you already have added the "i2c" group, you can skip to the next step.

Add the user "linaro" to be a member of the Linux group named "i2c" by running the following command:

sudo usermod -a -G gpio linaro

Add a "udev" rules file for I2C

Create a new "udev" rules file for the I2C on the Tinker Board by running the following command:

sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/92-i2c.rules

And add the following contents to the file:

KERNEL=="i2c-0"     , GROUP="i2c", MODE="0660"
KERNEL=="i2c-[1-9]*", GROUP="i2c", MODE="0666"

How to Use

The pin numbering used by your Gobot program should match the way your board is labeled right on the board itself.

r := tinkerboard.NewAdaptor()
led := gpio.NewLedDriver(r, "7")

How to Connect

Compiling

Compile your Gobot program on your workstation like this:

GOARM=7 GOARCH=arm GOOS=linux go build examples/tinkerboard_blink.go

Once you have compiled your code, you can upload your program and execute it on the Tinkerboard from your workstation using the scp and ssh commands like this:

scp tinkerboard_blink linaro@192.168.1.xxx:/home/linaro/
ssh -t linaro@192.168.1.xxx "./tinkerboard_blink"

Troubleshooting

PWM

Investigate state

# ls -la /sys/class/pwm/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 0 Apr 24 14:11 .
drwxr-xr-x 66 root root 0 Apr 24 14:09 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Apr 24 14:09 pwmchip0 -> ../../devices/platform/ff680000.pwm/pwm/pwmchip0

looking for one of the following items in the path: ff680000 => internally, not usable ff680010 => internally, not usable ff680020 => pwm2, pin33 ff680030 => pwm3, pin32

Activate

When there is no pwm2, pwm3, this can be activated. Open the file /boot/config.txt and add lines/remove comment sign and adjust:

intf:pwm2=on intf:pwm3=on

Then save the file, close and reboot.

After reboot check the state:

# ls -la /sys/class/pwm/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 0 Apr 24 14:11 .
drwxr-xr-x 66 root root 0 Apr 24 14:09 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Apr 24 14:09 pwmchip0 -> ../../devices/platform/ff680000.pwm/pwm/pwmchip0
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Apr 24 14:09 pwmchip1 -> ../../devices/platform/ff680010.pwm/pwm/pwmchip1
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Apr 24 14:09 pwmchip2 -> ../../devices/platform/ff680030.pwm/pwm/pwmchip2

Test

For example only pwm3 was activated to use pin32. Connect an oscilloscope or at least a meter to the pin 32.

switch to root user by "su -"

investigate state:

# ls -la /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    0 Apr 24 14:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    0 Apr 24 14:17 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    0 Apr 24 14:17 device -> ../../../ff680030.pwm
--w------- 1 root root 4096 Apr 24 14:17 export
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Apr 24 14:17 npwm
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    0 Apr 24 14:17 power
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    0 Apr 24 14:17 subsystem -> ../../../../../class/pwm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Apr 24 14:17 uevent
--w------- 1 root root 4096 Apr 24 14:17 unexport

Creating pwm0

echo 0 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/enable

investigate result:

# ls /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/
device  export  npwm  power  pwm0  subsystem  uevent  unexport
# ls /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/
capture  duty_cycle  enable  period  polarity  power  uevent
# cat /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/period 
0
# cat /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/duty_cycle 
0
# cat /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/enable 
0
# cat /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/polarity 
inversed

Initialization

Note: Before writing the period all other write actions will cause an error "-bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument"

echo 10000000 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/period # this is a frequency divider for 1GHz (1000 will produce a frequency of 1MHz, 1000000 will cause a frequency of 1kHz, her we got 100Hz)
echo "normal" > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/polarity
echo 3000000 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/duty_cycle # this means 30%
echo 1  > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/enable

Now we should measure a value of around 1V with the meter, because the basis value is 3.3V and 30% leads to 1V.

Try to inverse the sequence: echo "inversed" > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip2/pwm0/polarity Now we should measure a value of around 2.3V with the meter, which is the difference of 1V to 3.3V.

If we have attached an oscilloscope we can play around with the values for period and duty_cycle and see what happen.

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