Creating-Custom-Drivers-for-APQ8060-Dragonboard-BSQUARE

Creating Custom Drivers for the 

Snapdragon® APQ8060 DragonBoard 

Michael J. Chalupa 

Field Engineering Manager, BSQUARE Corporation

Welcome & Outline 

• Introduction of the APQ8060 DragonBoard 

– BSQUARE distributes and supports 

• Developing custom device for Android on the 

Qualcomm APQ8069 DragonBoard 

– Example driver based on Kionix KXSD9-1026 

accelerometer 

– Driver development process for Android 

• Conclusion

Qualcomm APQ8060 Development Board 

• APQ 8060 Development Board (AP Board) 

– Open board designed to be an easy-to-use 

platform with a Qualcomm APQ8060 chipset 

(excluding the WAN radio chip) 

• Includes a large number of connectors to support 

expansion 

– Intended for developers to have early access to 

devices/boards for use in: 

• Application development 

• Testing 

• Optimization

Qualcomm APQ8060 Development Board 

• APQ8060 enables the Qualcomm Ecosystem of 

3 rd -party Software developers, Universities and 

Component Suppliers to have early access to: 

– Hardware 

• Sensors 

• Displays and Touch screens 

• Cameras 

– Software 

• Applications/Games 

• Games 

• Operating Systems

What’s in the APQ8060 Development Board 

• APQ8060 dual core processor 

• PMICs (PM8058+PM8901) 

• 1500mAH battery 

• Display (3.61” WVGA) 

• Multi-touch Capacitance Sense 

touch screen 

• Daughter Cards 

– BT/WiFi Radio card 

• Qualcomm WCN1314 WLAN 

• Qualcomm WCN2243 BT 

– Sensor Card 

• Pressure and Temperature 

• 3-axis accelerometer 

• 3-axis Gyro 

• Proximity and Ambient Light 

• 3-axis Compass 

• 5MP ‘main’ camera 

• 2MP camera for video telePMICs 

• Keypad 

• Connectors 

– 20pin JTAG card 

– DE-9F RS-232 

– Mini-B USB port 

– 2x SIM 

– 2X SDIO 

– RJ-45 Ethernet 

– 3.5mm TRS Stereo Audio 

• Test points 

– MIPI-CSI (camera) 

– MIPI-DSI (display) 

– GPIOs 

– Parallel bus (EBI2) 

• Wolfson (WM8903LGEFK/V)

Distributed & Supported only by BSQUARE 

• Sales, Distribution and Support 

– Purchase at www.bsquare.com/qualcomm 

• Software updates 

• Support 

– 1 Hour of support included with purchase 

– Hardware and software support 

• Contact BSQUARE for assistance with 

additional services and support. 

– Email us at sales@bsquare.com.

Developing a Custom Driver for the 

APQ8060 Development Environment 

• Development Environment: 

– Create a Development System based on: 

• Ubuntu 64bit version 10.04 or newer 

– Required by Gingerbread's prebuilt gcc 4.4.3 toolchain 

• Java 1.6 JDK 

• Minicom 

– Used for Serial Debug

Android Source Release 

• The Android Release available for the APQ8060 is: 

– Android 2.3.3_r1 (Gingerbread) 

– Linux Kernel 2.6.35-7 

• The Android Source Code Release downloaded from : 

– http://www.codeaurora.org 

• Detailed instructions can be found at : 

– https://www.codeaurora.org/xwiki/bin/QAEP/ 

• Get Source by using : 

– $repo init –u git://codeaurora.org/platform/manifest.git –b 

gingerbread_rel –m M8660AAABQNLYA109002.xml 

– $ repo sync

Building the Android Source Release 

• To build your source follow these instructions : 

– cd 

– source build/envsetup.sh 

– choosecombo 1 1 msm8660_surf eng 

• Where 1 = Device 

• Where 1 = Release 

– make -j4 

• You now have successfully built the Android 

Images for the 8060 

– Located at out/target/product/msm8660_surf/ 

– cd out/target/product/msm8660_surf/

Installing the Android Image on the APQ8060 

• To enable your system to recognize the 

DragonBoard you will need to add this line to the 

51-android.rules file 

– SUBSYSTEM=="usb",SYSFS{idVendor}=="05c6", 

MODE="0666” 

• If the file does not exists in this location 

/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules you will need 

to create it.

Installing Android Image on the APQ8060 

• Power on the DragonBoard 

• Connect USB to your DragonBoard 

– Test connection to DragonBoard 

• adb devices 

– You should see a device listed: 

• adb reboot bootloader

Installing Android Image on the APQ8060 

• Follow these commands to install your Android 

Image 

– [Application boot-loader] 

• fastboot flash aboot emmc_appsboot.mbn 

– [Kernel] 

• fastboot flash boot boot.img 

– [System] 

• fastboot flash system system.img.ext 

– [Userdata] 

• fastboot flash userdata userdata.img.ext 

– [Persist(used for WIFI)] 

• fastboot flash persist persist.img.ext4

Running your Android Image 

• Once you have completed the download steps 

• Issue the “adb reboot” command or power cycle 

the board 

• The device will restart and bring up the new 

Android image 

• Now you are ready to start working on 

developing your custom device driver

Custom Device Driver Development on the 

DragonBoard 

• Custom Android driver develop is similar to 

Linux driver development 

• Need to acquire all necessary hardware and 

software technical details 

– Device Data Sheet 

– Schematics 

– Sample Driver Code (if available)

Custom Device Driver Development 

• Determine what type of driver you will be 

developing 

–Block 

– Character 

– Specific Interfaces 

• Display 

• Keyboard 

• Wifi 

• Camera, etc 

• Select a reference driver from the Open Source 

Community


• BSQUARE selected the Kionix KXSD9-1026 

accelerometer as our example device 

– New Accelerometer on the DragonBoard 

– A driver was not available for Android 

– Will be made available by Qualcomm for the DragonBoard 

• Selected the Bosch BMA150 accelerometer source 

from the Snapdragon 8x55 MDP source tree as our 

reference device driver 

• Start initial driver modifications leveraging the 

reference driver


• Find a Similar Device Driver available in an 

existing Android Release 

– Since we were making an accelerometer device we 

took the source from an accelerometer used in a 

similar product to use as a starting point 

• The BMA150 

• Taken from the MSM7x30 source 

• An I2C based device driver 

– In this new file, we changed all text of bma150 to 

kxds9 and appended the opening boiler plate


• Compare the datasheet for the original device 

(bma150) with the new device (kxsd9) and 

make the necessary changes 

• For example we needed to: 

– change all I2C register locations 

– expand the range of G forces allowed 

– change and expand the bandwidth ranges


• By further examining the KXSD9 datasheet 

we determined the following changes were 

required: 

– The MSB and LSB values of the accelerometer 

data were in different order from an i2c block read 

versus the BMA150 

– The KXSD9 only has 1 bit for enable and disable 

• These types of changes are normal when 

leveraging exiting driver code for integration 

of new devices

Adding the new driver to the build 

• Added the following to /drivers/input/misc/Kconfig 

config KIONIX_KXSD9 

tristate "KXSD9 acceleration sensor support“ 

depends on I2C=y 

help 

If you say yes here you get support for Kionix's 

acceleration sensor KXSD9 

• Added the following to /drivers/input/misc/Kconfig 

obj-$(CONFIG_KIONIX_KXSD9) += kxsd9.o 

• Added the following to our config file at 

/arch/arm/configs/msm8660_defconfig 

CONFIG_KIONIX_KXSD9=y

Adding the new driver to the build 

• Once you have modified all of the source 

code to support your device, the next step is 

to: 

– build the kernel with the new driver so that the 

new image has support for the new device 

• Next you have to enable the device in your 

board

Add the New Device to Your Board file 

• For our driver, we added the new device into 

our “board-8660.c file” 

– The Kionix device needed to have “power on” and 

“power off” functions 

• We leveraged the reference sensor “power on” and off 

code from board-7x30.c and made the following 

modifications 

– One regulator needed to be turned on 

– Voltage needed to be set to 2.85v 

– Neede a New regulator API vs. the code in the 7x30 file

Add the New Device to Your Board file 

– Created an i2c_board_info structure based on 

data from the datasheet and board schematic 

• I2c address is 0x18 – from datasheet 

• IRQ is tied to GPIO pin 57 – from schematic 

– Added a new “i2c_board_info” structure to the list 

of devices to initialize at start up 

• register_i2c_devices() 

– Now you are ready to boot the kernel and you 

should see KXSD9 initialization messages

BSQUARE Overview 

� Industry leader with a proven track record in providing production-ready software 

products, engineering services and licensing to smart device manufacturers. 

� BSQUARE licenses device software and provides software engineering services 

to OEMs, ODMs and enterprises creating medical embedded devices based on 

Windows Embedded, Windows Mobile and other operating systems. 

24 

6/ 

2/ 

20 

11

BSQUARE End-to-end Service Offerings 

• Device Consulting 

•System Software 

and Hardware 

Development 

• Application and 

Middleware 

Development 

• Quality Assurance 

and Testing 

• Program 

Management 

BSQUARE 

Services 

• Windows 

Embedded CE BSP 

for TI OMAP 

• Snapdragon MDP 

• Adobe Flash Player 

ports 

•TestQuest Pro 

•TestQuest 

CountDown 

•HTML5 Rendering 

•Secure Digital 

Middleware 

BSQUARE IP 

Training and Technical Support 

©2010 BSQUARE Corporation. All rights reserved. BSQUARE is a registered trademark of BSQUARE Corporation. 

All other names, product names and trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. 

• Windows ® 

Embedded: 

Embedded 

Standard, Compact, 

CE, Desktop, Server 

• Windows ® Mobile 

•McAfee ® Embedded 

Security 

• Adobe ® Flash ® 

• Datalight 

Third Party 

Products

BSQUARE Additional Services & Products 

• Application Development 

– The BSQUARE global application development team builds cross platform applications 

for devices running Android, Brew MP, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone operating 

systems. 

• Automated Testing Tools 

– Best‐in‐class test automation tools from BSQUARE, mobile and wireless device 

manufacturers and application developers can decrease test cycle time, increase test 

coverage, improve test accuracy, accelerate new products to market and ensure a 

quality end user experience. 

• User Interface Solutions 

– Create innovative user experiences for Android, Linux and Windows platforms with 

BSQUARE expertise in Adobe® Flash®, HTML5 Rendering Engine, Custom WebKit Ports 

and user interface development. 

• Support 

– BSQUARE offers extended support for software developers and device manufacturers 

using the Snapdragon Mobile Development Platform including phone, email and 

Knowledge Base.

BSQUARE: Enabling the Next Generation 

Smart. Connected. World. 

©2011 BSQUARE Corporation. All rights reserved. BSQUARE is a registered trademark of BSQUARE Corporation. 

All other names, product names and trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Thank You! 

Michael Chalupa, Field Engineering Manager, 

BSQUARE

Creating-Custom-Drivers-for-APQ8060-Dragonboard-BSQUARE

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?