ARM® Sitara™ AM3359 running QNX® Neutrino RTOS
The Industrial Development Kit (IDK) is a platform to develop industrial communications and control applications. It comprises a baseboard with the main processor AM3359 Sitara™ as well as associated core components like RAM, Flash memory and USB. The baseboard carries a daughter board with the specific building blocks for industrial automation: Interfaces to RS232/485, CAN and EtherCAT®, digital I/O, several LEDs as well as a motor driver circuit. Additionally, the daughter board is equipped with an extra power supply 24V DC to directly connect to a motor or a PLC.
The special feature of the AM3359 processor is its two programmable realtime units – PRU. These units can for instance handle the lower layers of the EtherCAT® protocol and therefore significantly offload the main processor.
A complete product description can be found here.
QNX BSP: Background Information
Texas Instruments offer a general-purpose evaluation module (GP EVM) for their Sitara™ AM335x family of processors. A comprehensive board support package (BSP) is available from QNX for this board. Similarly to the IDK, the GP EVM comprises a base and a daughter board. The baseboards of IDK and GP EVM are very similar. Therefore the BSP for the IDK is derived from the existing BSP for the GP EVM. Copying of source code has been restricted to the absolute minimum. All components that can be used on both platforms (e.g. driver for onboard NAND flash or startup library) are only referenced.
Building
In order to build the BSP it is necessary to import and build the BSP for the GP EVM first. It can be obtained from the following URL: http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.bsp/wiki/TiAm335Evm. Detailed instructions for building and installing on the target platform can be found in the User’s Guide. The current version of the BSP is tested against the BSP for the GP EVM released September 18, 2012.
Support
Are you experiencing any difficulties in using our BSP? Please do not hesitate to use our helpdesk. Specific development can be requested via the helpdesk or the general contact form.
Sitara™ is a trademark of Texas Instruments Incorporated. QNX® is a registered trademark of QNX Software Systems. EtherCAT® is a registered trademark and patented technology, licensed by Beckhoff Automation GmbH. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
