Dear Linux community,
We have just finished round of testing and are able to release drivers for PicoScope to be used on ARM powered platforms. We have decided to focus on 2 groups: specialized armhf build for RaspberryPi under control of Raspbian and more general amrhf build to be used with BeagleBoneBlack (cortex-A8 based devices) under control of Debian.
There are few remarks with this release as well with general notes to be taken into account before using those drivers on embedded devices.
- It is recommended to use powered USB hub while connecting the devices. Some of the devices have increased power requirements and connecting them to the embedded system may cause a power surge, which subsequently may cause voltage drop effecting in OS/CPU hang or in extreme cases blowing a fuse or damaging the port.
- Most of the embedded systems will be running below recommended system requirements for the drivers. This means that on some occasions while system is busy, the driver will not have enough resources to process the data, resulting in internal watchdog kicking in and dropping of the device / hanging the application.
- Designing application you should have in mind memory requirements and adjust the sampling rate/amount accordingly to the device it is run under.
- Although the use case in this topic shows PicoScope6 running on BeagleBoneBlack, there are no current plans on releasing it for mentioned platforms. Mainly due to system resource demands. We did optimize the application to the point of operation, but the real world usability is minimal.
- The drivers may work on other platforms - but those cases we are not able to test or provide fixes for. Also they are delivered as Debian packages and extracting binaries for use with another system may cause the faulty behavior.
- This release is treated as *BETA* release. We took care to make all drivers features to be available, but they may not work in all cases. At this stage it is mainly targeted for experienced software/system developers willing to explore possibility of running our devices on mentioned platforms. For any queries and bug reports please contact support@picotech.com
The packages have been provided on our Debian/Raspbian(new) repositories. To get drivers for BeagleBoneBlack and likes, the entry in /etc/apt/sources.list should be:
Code: Select all
deb http://labs.picotech.com/debian/ picoscope main
For Raspbian use the following:
Code: Select all
deb http://labs.picotech.com/raspbian/ picoscope main
Every package is signed with or key, so in order to verify them the public part has to imported:
Code: Select all
wget -O - http://labs.picotech.com/debian/dists/picoscope/Release.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
To pull/update repositories cache run
And to install package for required device use
Following packages are available: libpl1000, libps2000, libps2000a, libps3000, libps3000a, libps4000, libps4000a, libps5000, libps5000a, libps6000, libusbdrdaq, libusbtc08
Every driver package comes with C console example - /opt/picoscope/share/doc/libdriver. Those require autotools to configure. To install all dependencies use:
Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake make libtool
To compile the example, in the console/terminal navigate to the required folder.
Code: Select all
cd /opt/picoscope/share/doc/libdriver
To prepare build files run (and wait...):
Then compile the code:
And finally run the application (adjust model to the specific example):
The examples were taken straight from any other Linux releases. They may have values/configurations not suitable for every particular device so please be aware.
Best Regards,
Mario