Cubieboard2 NAND install

Cubieboard2 NAND install

I followed the bring up instruction that most of cubieboard site describes, and I could boot cubian from SD card. However, when I tried to install the boot image to NAND, I was not able to boot the system successfully. Although cubian-nandinstall was completed without any errors, it did not boot without SD card. It took for a while that I found out the cubian-nandinstall message saying "*** Read http://tinyurl.com/qyee5k2, if the board won't boot from NAND ***". I followed the link, and this is the instruction how to solve the issue. Basically, it needs to burn NAND with lubuntu and then burn it again with cubian-nandinstall.

1. Burn NAND with lubuntu image using USB OTG
   Download and extract PhoenixSuit. (My host is Windows, so I used PhoenixSuit instead of LiveSuit.)

   http://dl.cubieboard.org/software/tools/livesuit/PhoenixSuit1.0.7.rar

   Hold FEL button of the cubieboard2 and connect the USB OTG port to PC. While the driver installation, the FEL button needs to be pressed. If driver is not found, manually install the driver under the extracted PhoenixSuite driver folder.
   
   Download and extract lubuntu desktop image. 

   http://docs.cubieboard.org/tutorials/a20-cubieboard_lubuntu_desktop_releases

   Launch PhoenixSuit.exe and press "Firmware" tab. Select the img file downloaded above and press "Upgrade". Before writing the image, unplug and plug back in the USB cable by pressing FEL button.
   
   When it is completed successfully, unplug the USB cable. The next step is to prepare for the cubian installed SD card.
   
   
2. Prepare for SD card with cubian
   This is done easily using "ImageWriter" which can be downloaded from following link.

   https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer

   Download cubian SD card image file from the link below and unzip the file.
   

   http://cubian.org/downloads/
   

   Connect SD card to PC and launch "ImageWriter". Make sure it detects the SD card.
   Select the image file and press "Copy" to start writing the image to SD card.
   
   
3. Burn NAND with cubian-nandinstall
   Insert the SD card to cubieboard2 and  and boot the board. Once system boots successfully, all you need to do is run a command which is "cubian-nandinstall".
   If the command is not available, you need to install the tool.

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install cubian-nandinstall
   sudo cubian-nandinstall

   It will take for a while to finish it and after it is done, it asks to power off the system.
   Select "Yes" and power off the board. When you boot next time, remove the SD card and it should boot from NAND.
   

Hardware:
    Cubieboard2
    MicroSD Card
   
Summary:


Reference:     
http://cubian.org/2014/06/30/troubleshooting-nandinstall-on-a20/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeULfhdX1CY

Current Measurement Tool (INA219)

Current Measurement Tool(INA219)

Current measurement for board evaluation requires quite expensive tools and not so easy to log the data over time. So for the quick test and estimation of the system power consumption, I wanted to bring up a tool that I can easily use without taking so much space of my desk. The easiest way that I was thinking is to use instrumental amplifier or something to measure the voltage difference between a small resistance and feed the analog output to the ADC in a MCU. MCU can log the data and send the data to host PC through USB or other interface.I have a Arduino UNO board that I got long time ago, and it was just sitting on my desk... so I thought it would be a great opportunity to use the board to test this tool. 
Fortunately, I found a chip INA219 that has I2C support with built-in analog front-end and ADC, so it makes this bring up so easy and decided to use this chip with Arduino.

http://www.ti.com/product/ina219

Instead of building a board, I decided to use cheap breakout board that is available.
This breakout board is actually tested with Arduino and all the instruction is available in the link below.
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ina219-current-sensor-breakout

I measured 5V trace of one of my board and it shows the current between the shunt resistor.

The measured numbers can be displayed using Tera Term.

Hardware:
    Arduino UNO
    INA219 Breakout board
   
Summary:
INA219 is very easy to use . I would consider using for the other board evaluations. Evaluation board is available at Texas Instrument site, but the cost is high. So for the quick introduction, Adafruit board with Arduino is very reasonable to start with.
http://www.ti.com/tool/ina219evm

Reference:     
http://www.ti.com/product/ina219
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ina219-current-sensor-breakout