Hi, I am looking to preorder a UDOO Bolt from Mouser. It appears that I have to sign a purchase agreement to secure my order which is non-returnable/refundable. I will be using this inside of a robotics project and I really need to be able to access the SPI bus natively from linux(as well as the other GPIO pins) C/C++ program. I'd prefer not to have to UART to the onboard Arduino and then have that translate to SPI. Is this possible? Thanks!
Embedded Controller (MEC1705) SPI is at least accessible through the header (eg the Udoo X86Braswell side has no SPI). https://www.udoo.org/docs-bolt/Hardware_References/Pinout_Headers.html It will now depend on Linux drivers and Kernels if it is really usable (personally I have no clue...) @evaloverde could an Udoo engineer comment on this?
Yes. That is always the X-factor. In theory it should work based on the hardware. Curious about those drivers of course. If this is possible there is nothing that can compete with this board from a robotics implementation perspective especially at this price range with the flexibility of speccing your own memory/storage etc. To have this much power in a board this small with CPU side accessible GPIO/SPI etc will be phenomenal.
Since the first question was asked the documentation has changed and something was added: You can use the SPI exposed by the EC using the EAPI libraries in your software Please checkout the EAPI link.
Acually ı need to control about all pins. I purely use this as a kind of mcu. For example, ı will change the PWM output at 100 Hz
Ok, you want an Arduino? There is one on board, the Leonardo https://www.udoo.org/docs-bolt/Arduino_Leonardo_compatible(ATmega32U4)/Overview.html
As waltervl said you can control most of the CN25 pins with the EAPI libraries. Some I think will only work using their corresponding protocol functions: SPI, I2C1, I2C2, UART0, UART1 The ones labeled as "KEYBOARD SCAN" (pin 13 to 28) can be used as general purpose IO pins. I didn't test the SPI, I2C, etc, but I made some simple tests with the KEYBOARD SCAN pins on linux and was able to read/write from them using the sample app provided in the EAPI package: https://www.udoo.org/docs-bolt/BIOS_UEFI_and_Tools/EAPI.html What I'm not sure (because I don't have experience) is if the timing control you can have on those pins on a full operating system like Linux is better than handling them directly with a MCU. But having the Arduino embedded on board maybe you can mix and let it be in charge of some specific functions where a MCU might be more appropriate for the task and let the CPU give them the orders through UART.
EC, in my view, should be used with caution. It is part of the Core system, not an optional adjunct. If one did something (sorry about language) stupid, he's throwing few hundred dollar to the drain. On the other hand, Arduino is easy to use and even it's cooked, one can still use a few dollar external Arduino to do the work. Besides, Arduino device IO library is feature rich, you want PWM, just use a PWM library. That's all it takes. On EC side, one will have to use an external circuit, e.g., an I2C--PWM to do the work. I would also caution check first if there are already system devices on its SPI or I2C buses. (UART1 and UART2 are mapped to Core x86/AMD64's OS' Com1 and Com2 ports anyway.) P.S., I'd rather see Arduino related questions use a separate thread. This one is just for EC's external IO interface.
Maybe you should try BeagleBone Black which is quite good and of course supporting spi standard interaface.
