STMP157-SOM-512-IND industrial grade system on module status update April 2021

STMP157-SOM-512 is functional drop in replacement for A13-SOM-512 and have exactly the same features, but is industrial grade -40+85C.

All connectors have same signals on the both boards:

For STMP157-SOM-512 we made special STMP1(A13)-SOM-EVB:

With this board all SOM features can be explored:

• two USB High Speed Hosts
• one USB-OTG
• WiFi/BT module with PCB antenna and option for external antenna
• 100MB Ethernet
• Flash connector for attaching SPI, NAND, eMMC Flash modules
• Audio input, output
• UEXT connector
• LCD connector for LCD-OLinuXino-XX
• GPIO connector

Needless to say the EVB works with A13-SOM-512 also.

Mainline uboot and Linux Kernal 5.12 with support for all peripherals is available.

STMP157-SOM-512 and STMP1(A13)SOM-EVB boards are now in production and will be on the web for sale by the end of April.

STMP157-OLinuXino-LIME2-IND status update April 2021

The last issues with STM32MP1 mainline Linux kernel support were resolved and now we run STMP157-OLinuXino-LIME2 in production!

Revision B fixes all hardware issues in the initial prototype. STMP157-OLINUXINO-LIME2 is complete analog of A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 which is one of our best selling Allwinner board.

Mainline uboot and Linux kernel 5.12 images are available with all periperials working.

We will have STMP157-OLINUXINO-LIME2 on our web for sale by the end of April.

This is also our first board with Ethernet supporting Precise Time Protocol and Time Sensitive Networking implemented.

Open Source Hardware STMP1-OLinuXino-LIME2 industrial grade Linux computer update – Debian Buster and Ubuntu Focal with mainline Kernel 5.10.12 now supports almost everything

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STMP1-OLinuXino-LIME2 Industrial grade Linux Computer project took us almost an year of work to build proper software support for our hardware with mainline uboot and kernel.

ST demo board uses Yocto with kernel 5.4, our images use Linux Kernel 5.10.12

These who monitor our Official images at https://images.olimex.com probably nottice that we already have images with Debian Buster and Ubuntu Focal for STM32MP1 where almost everything now work with mainline Linux Kernel 5.10.12.

• We had lot of troubles around the Ethernet, but now it works pretty well!

• CAN-FD – works!

• Two USB High speed hosts with 1A current – works!

• LCD – works

• HDMI – works!

• eMMC Flash boot – works!

• PMU and LiPo charger battery support – works

Two things on this board left not complete:

• low power modes
• USB-OTG

New prototypes rev.B now are in production, the Chinese New Year will delay them to end of February. We hope meantime to solve these two last issues and run production.

UPDATE: As some people wanted to know what was the Ethernet issue we were struggling so long, I posted in the comment section.

For the USB-OTG my guess is that it’s also some silly issue so people may help:

STM32MP1 has two High speed USB hosts and one Full speed USB-OTG, here is snip from their Hardware development document:

Here is our schematic which follows above guide:

The two High Speed USB hosts work as expected, but the USB-OTG has issue summarized here: https://pastebin.com/i6G90kdg

What makes us a little bit suspicious is that STM in their own demo board didn’t follow their Hardware Guide and were wiring one of their High speed USB as OTG and connecting USB hub to the other, ignoring the Full speed USB at all.

Happy New Year 2021! New board updates

Happy New Year! Olimex team wish you health and best of luck in the new 2021. Let all troubles from 2020 go away!

Update on UK shipping:

Brexit brings some troubles for trade with UK. We stopped the shipping to UK on December 23 2020 as we didn’t know how to handle the orders when we are back on January 4th.

When we got back in office we had expected news: The couriers raised their prices with almost 50% due to the extra efforts around the new UK regulations, but this was just the beginning.

From January 1st 2021 all shipments to UK with value under GBP 135 must be with included charged VAT. For this purpose all online shops which ships to UK must register for UK customs EORI and UK VAT-ID. They have to charge the VAT at the time of shipping and to pay to UK government all collected VAT at the end of the month. The shipments above GBP 135 are shipped with export declaration and without VAT as for any other countries outside EU.

The big platforms like Amazon, ebay etc. also need to register (probably they already did) and collect the VAT from their sellers.

We still not have EORI neither UK VAT-ID so we can’t ship small orders. Orders above EUR 200 are processed normally. We are sorry for this inconvenience and apologise to all our small UK customers.

Update on current boards:

iMX8Qmax board high speed signals are completely routed, we now make the connector arrangements on the PCB and hope to be ready for prototypes in March.

S3-OLinuXino revision B of the board prototypes works great. Bootlin reported that their mainline driver for CSI2 work with RaspberryPi IMX219 8 Mpix camera, CSI1 is with OV2640 2Mpix camera connector. Gigabit ethernet, Audio microphone, PoE option, eMMC/SPI Flash option, etc all are tested and work fine. We are making now final touch ups and will run production.

STMP1-SOM small module with STM32MP151/3/7 is on prototype Revision B and everything exept the Audio is working fine. Production will follow in March.

STMP1-OLinuXino-LIME2 is stuck at Gigabit Ethernet. We had many other issues which were solved, but this remains. The original ST design uses RTL8211 which is commercial grade, we put KSZ9031RNXIC-TR instead and there is neither correctly sent neither correctly received package. We use this chip in Allwinner A20 and A64 designs without problems. We used all combinations of delays of the clocks and singnals etc with no luck. Our guess is the port hardware drivers are somehow incompatible with this PHY and are either slow either make rings which confuse the PHY chip. If someone has more knowledge and can help, we can send board.

Industrial grade -45+85C STMP1-SOM is almost completely routed and pin to pin compatible with A13-SOM

A13-SOM-256 and A13-SOM-512 are low cost Linux running System on Modules which are very popular but lack industrial grade operating temperature.

STM32MP1XXX series of SOC from ST is the first mass produced SOC which operates from -45 up to +125C by default, so we decided to design SOM module with STM32MP1XX SOC which to be pin to pin compatible with A13-SOM and offer same interfaces and signals so it could be drop in replacement for A13-SOM without need to re-design the complete product.

As you can see for STMP1-SOM we decided to put the SOC on opposite side of the connectors, this allow if necessary to add aluminum heatsink without interference with mainboard.

Also we add AXP209 PMU which allow lower power operating modes and LiPo battery backup and operation on battery only which is missing in the original A13-SOM.

STMP1-SOM will be offered with three SOC choices STM32MP151, STM32MP153 and STM32MP157.

The prices will start from EUR 15 for the non industrial grade memory which are similar to A13-SOM and EUR 18 for the industrial grade -45+85C memory version.

We expect first STMP1-SOMs to be available in July 2020.

Full mainline Linux support will be available at http://images.olimex.com/

The Industrial grade -40+125C Open Source Hardware Linux board which is hardware compatible with A20-OLinuxino-LIME2 but with ST Microelectronics STM32MP1xx SOC STMP1-OLinuXino routing is complete

STMP1-OLinuXino routing is complete. It took 6 months from the idea to the finish.

Why it took so long? We had several times to re-design the schematics around the DDR memory and power supply.

Our goal was to make it pin to pin compatible with OLinuXino-LIME2 and we achieved it.

STMP1-OLinuXino has:

• Same size as LIME2
• Same GPIOs on same places
• Ethernet, USB, battery Lipo, buttons, HDMI, SD-card on same places
• same mount holes
• 1GB DDR3 memory
• Gigabit Ethernet interface
• HDMI interface
• LCD interface
• 2x USB hosts and 1x USB-OTG
• micro SD-card
• GPIOs have similar interfaces on the same positions
• LiPo battery charger and step up converter for battery operation
• CAN interface

There are few differences:

• we add Flash connector where different flash modules will be attached: NAND Flash, SPI Flash, eMMC Flash, so instead to keep many different versions of the board with different Flash options like LIME2 this will be done with exchangeable modules
• we put the STM32MP1 SOC on bottom where adding heatsink do not interference with the top GPIO connectors and add-on boards

The STM32MP1 devices work at -20/40+125C operating temperature by default which makes them perfect for industrial applications.

There will be different versions with STM32MP151/153/157 as they share same BGA package, also there will be some versions with commercial temperature grade components for lower cost.  Our preliminary estimations are the prices to be between EUR 35 and 70 depend on the different configurations.

STM32MP1-OLinuXino development update, we managed to build Ubuntu 18.04.LTS with Linux Kernel 5.3. Now we need your feedback on GPIOs

One of the benefits to work with European SOC vendor and distributors – just few days after we show interest in the new STM32MP1 series of SOCs DHL come with one big carton where we got STM32MP151AAC and STM32MP157AAA3 samples plus the most comprehensive ST kit with all features of the high end STM32MP157AAA3. The credits go to EBV as we got these totally free of charge. The kit came with comprehensive documentation for both board, software support etc. In regard of customer friendliness Chinese SOC vendors has long way to go.

We needed one day to build our own Linux image as we didn’t like (no offense) the Yocto ST uses, so here is Ubuntu 18.04.LTS with Kernel 5.30 boot:

Overall we have very positive vibes that STM32MP1 is good candidate for new industrial grade OLinuXino-LIME2!

The specs of the STM32MP1-OLinuXino-LIME2 we work now are:

• STM32MP151AAC or STM32MP157AAA3 they are pin to pin compatible so one board will be used for both
• 1GB DDR3L industrial grade memory -45+90C
• Gigabit Ethernet with PoE plug-in option (*)
• AXP209 PMU with LiPo charger and step-up so everything works even with no external power supply
• two USB 2.0 high speed hosts
• USB-OTG 2.0
• HDMI+CEC
• LIME2 board shape and same connector positions
• replacing with CAN the SATA connector
• micro SD-card
• SPI/NAND/eMMC Flash on socket and different options(**)

(*) we love what Raspberry Pi did with their PoE hat, board which is working as normal, and have PoE functionality if PoE hat is attached. We intend to add such PoE feature to our other Allwinner boards too, but will take time to re-design them all.

(**) this is new experimental feature instead to keep many different LIME2 board versions which only differs the amount of flash on them. The Flash will be on plug in module, something which Odroid does for years and we do wonder why we didn’t do earlier, as now keeping so many versions of LIME, LIME2 and MICRO is killing our production manager and logistics :). If these Flash modules work as expected we will re-design our LIME, LIME2 and MICRO to use them also .

STM32MP1 series has some very unique features missing in Allwinner SOCs like:

• 6× I2C up to 1 Mbit/s
• 4× UART + 4× USART up to 12.5 Mbit/s, ISO7816, LIN, IrDA, SPI slave
• 6× SPI 50 Mbit/s, 3 FD I2S audio class accuracy
• 4× SAI stereo audio: I2S, PDM, SPDIF Tx
• SPDIF Rx with 4 inputs
• 8-14-bit camera interface up to 140 Mbyte/s
• 2× ADCs with 16-bit max. resolution 3.6-4.5Msps
• 2× 12-bit D/A converters 1 MHz

We will try to arrange GPIOs with similar functions so A20-LIME2 current customers to may exchange with STM32MP1-LIME2 if they want or to have second SOC choice, but we are open to listen to your tips and suggestions how to arrange the ADC/DAC signals and extra I2C, UARTS, SPIs on the GPIO1-GPIO4 connectors optimally.

STM32MP1 series has only one operating temperature range -45+125C.

Many people may think that on 650Mhz the Cortex-A7 cores are running slow, but this is because this SOC has to work reliable from -45 to +125C. All SOCs which run on extended temperature range run on lower speed clocks compared with same parts which run on commercial 0-70C. If you want to run your STM32MP1 board at home in non demanding apps, we are pretty sure you will be able to overclock it at much higher values and it will work, but when we talk industrial devices and reliable 24/7 operation the clocks are always announced with most conservative values.

STM32MP1 nice candidate for new industrial grade OLinuXino-LIME

ST Microelectronic released new interesting device it’s Cortex-A7 and Cortex-M4 in one package. This solves two problems – the connectivity and ample amount of DDR3 memory to run Linux on Cortex-A7 core and the additional co-processor with Cortex-M4 for Real Time tasks. On top of this it’s -40+125C operating temperature and with 10 years supply longevity warranty from ST.

The prices starts around USD 5, which is in same range as Allwinner/Rockchip.

Their top model STM32MP157C has 3D openGL ES2.0 and CAN. There will be finally properly documented Secure boot (we hope 🙂  ):

From recent Twitter post I see than Bootlin already works on Linux support for STM32MP1.

Overall STM32MP1 looks like very promising SOC for Industrial grade Linux computer.