Setting up the Bifferboard - see also notes on the ready-made files
some more notes for when I have to do it again
Many thanks to Bifferos for answering my many "OpenWrt new user" questions

Objective
See if I can do all I did on the nslu2 (Slug) but at 1Watt (for a battery driven robot control system)

Load standard nano, http, ftp, samba, - working!
USB to RS232 converter - working!
Setup an HD webcam - working!
Drive the gpio pins - working!
Drive an i2c bus- working on some chips....
Flite (text to speech) - working!
Webpage control of external devices - working!
Setup a 3D sound USB dongle for playing MP3 etc - working for small files - not MP3 music tracks
Setup a WiFi dongle - not yet

The basic software tools
Nano - "text editing for the rest of us" (Mac users will understand)
Samba - no problem - see my Sweex notes
FTP server - I normally use vsftpd but this did not work - I got "OOPS: Socketpair"
so I tried openssh-sftp-server - that works fine with Cyberduck in the Mac
opkg install openssh-sftp-server

see also http://www.sunspot.co.uk/Projects/sweexproject.htm menu item 11

Backup of key files to add to the memory stick

HD webcam - IT WORKS!!

I have a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 Webcam which provides an HD quality picture - inspired by this link
I did -
opkg install kmod-video-uvc which also loaded kmod-video-core
opkg install mjpg-streamer
You get a new website in /webcam_www

To serve the pictures on the web do
mjpg_streamer -i "input_uvc.so -r 960x720" -o "output_http.so -p 8080 -w /webcam_www"
in Firefox I then looked at my new Bifferboard website at 192.168.0.9:8080
So for below £90 you can put live High Definition pictures on the Web!
see also

Picture taken by Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 Webcam and served to the Mac - this is a Mac screen shot (as seen on the right)

From the top
USB to RS232 (from the Mac)
USB2 hub with a Kingston 512M USB FLASH memory stick and a QuickCam Pro 9000
Bifferboard (with the bright blue LED)
3.3V logic to RS232 (MAX 3232) - home built

NOTE!
I bought a 4port USB hub from eBay - 4 ports at 90 degress to each other (see picture below) and it caused the QuickCam to drop its resolution down from the HD setting.
These use the GENESYS GL850 chip.
The controller avove that works to the full resolution uses the Cypress CY7C65640-LFC TetraHub controller
both chips claim 480 Mbps

The Cypress press release claims :-
The only hub controller to integrate four transaction translators, the Cypress TetraHub(TM) allows all three USB speeds -- low-speed (1.5 Mbps), full-speed (12 Mbps) and hi-speed (480 Mbps) -- to coexist in any USB-enabled system.

Please email me if you know which hubs for sale now use the Cypress CY7C65640-LFC TetraHub controller

USB to RS232 converter working!! This converter has a ftdi chip and was bought from here opkg install kmod-usb-serial-ftdi It runs at a default of 9600 baud - I have yet to run stty

At the top of the right picture is a popular USB 4-port hub that will not allow the Quickcam Pro to work at full resolution. See note above. The D-Link WIFI dongle and the 3D sound dongle both currently fail to be recognised. Please email me if you fix that!! In order to mount the Bifferboard I soldered a tin-can bracket to the top of the ethernet socket - I also added a countersunk bolt to the hole in the board near the USB socket - you need to avoid pressing near various surface mount components. The additional matrix board carries a Max3232 or RS232 and also 2 FETs for i2c 3.3 to 5 volt conversion. The red and green LEDs are for gpio testing when this becomes available.

This 4-in-line USB2 hub works for the maximum pixel count on the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 HD webcam. Some that look identical do not give the full high definition - I ordered a second from another source and it failed. The ones that work have small dimple in the plastic case close to the green LED and the IN USE sign - in the centre of the picture on the right - this is absent in those that reduce the top resolution. Also the chip is marked :- FE1.1 USB 2.0 HUB LB37794A4118 The chip also carries a curved T shape logo. To be sure you get the right hub send an email to bebaboty<type an at sign> gmail <type a dot>com and refer to this page. His eBay name is Thesists

Work in progress

WIFI USB dongle
I got this to run on Debian Slug because I could compile drivers on the board itself
I eventually got the kmod-rt73-usb driver to compile in OpenWrt but my D-Link DWL-G122 was not recognised on bootup - many odd messages

Compile C on the Bifferboard
In this link I did a similar thing on the Sweex/Edimax router

The uClibc ready made file system for 486 is called root_fs_i386.ext2.bz2
It is refered to on the uClibc site here but is not present in fact. I found a copy here

I guess it wants rebuilding from source - if you do a " hello world" after a

chroot root_fs

then it runs OK in there. Back in the root file structure it does not run.

BUT

if you compile with
gcc --static -o helloworld helloworld.c
it then runs fine in the root directory - but the file is bigger !

Please email me if you find an efficient way to compile on the Bifferboard.

Compile C on the toolchain
Instead of
gcc -o helloworld helloworld.c
use
/home/graham/bb-src-1.1/openwrt/staging_dir/toolchain-i386_gcc-4.1.2_uClibc-0.9.29/usr/bin/i486-openwrt-linux-uclibc-gcc -o helloworld helloworld.c

You can aso use
gcc --static -o helloworld helloworld.c
in normal Debian linux and helloworld will run on the Bifferboard with a much (!) larger file size

/etc/opkg.conf

src/gz snapshots http://www.sunspot.co.uk/SunspotBiffOpkg090327
dest root /
dest ram /tmp
lists_dir ext /var/opkg-lists
option overlay_root /jffs

MISC NOTES FOR PERSONAL USE - to be edited

Bifferboard only needs ohci, but it's compiled in.
No point selecting them in openwrt config, because
the kernel has hard-coded them as [*]. You need to
override them in opkg config.
Bifferboard doesn't have uhci controller. ohci controller is built into the kernel, no package required for this.

get all the packages links
make package/symlinks

If you want to compile a single package you need the following command.
First select the package in menuconfig. If it is not selected you need to add DEVELOPER=1 to compile it.
This example compiles python which has been given [M] in menuconfig to request a module for use with opkg.

make package/python/{clean,compile,install} V=99

> /root/trunk/staging_dir/toolchain-i386_gcc-4.1.2_uClibc-0.9.29/usr/bin/i486-openwrt-linux-uclibc-gcc
> =======================================================================
> But how do I run a complex C source package that contains a
> config and a
> makefile? (Blassic is like that - it just assumes gcc will
> do the job.)
> =======================================================================

You will find you can specify all sorts of things directly to configure, do ./configure --help for a list. They should include things like include path location and so on. Point it to your toolchain from OpenWrt and it should work. At a minimum specify include path, library path, and the name of your gcc (i486-openwrt-linux-uclibc-gcc).

In the gpio package please try to change gpio-proxy.c at the top it says

#include <gpio.h>

Make it say:

#include <linux/gpio.h>

/etc/init.d/graham_boot

#!/bin/sh /etc/rc.common
# Copyright (C) 2006 OpenWrt.org
START=60
# graham startup items
# insmod i2c-gpio-custom bus0=0,<SDA>,<SCL>
insmod i2c-gpio-custom bus0=0,12,9

Set a small ramdisk to avoid thrashing the FLASH memory stick
mount -o size=2M -t tmpfs tmpfs /var/www/ramdisk

Run the HD webcam at bootup

mjpg_streamer -b -i "input_uvc.so -r 960x720" -o "output_http.so -p 8080 -w /webcam_www"
echo "graham_boot has run"

save to /etc/init.d/graham_boot
then do ln /etc/init.d/graham_boot /etc/rc.d/S97graham_boot

try soon

Re: Disabling serial console to allow serial port use

After building from the source tarball:

cd openwrt
make kernel_menuconfig

uncheck:
Device Drivers -> Character devices -> Serial Drivers ->
Console on 8250/16550 and compatible serial port.

That should stop the console log messages. You may also need
to uncheck:
Kernel Hacking -> Early printk

Then run 'make' and flash the resultant kernel. Let me know if that doesn't
work. Better make sure network access to your rootfs is working because you'll
have no other way of logging in.

Kind regards,
Biff.

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