[The 3rd Xuantie Cup RISC-V Application Innovation Competition] Licheepi 4A unboxing and flashing system

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[The 3rd Xuantie Cup RISC-V Application Innovation Competition] Licheepi 4A unboxing and flashing system [Copy link]

 

Preface: When I got the development board, I felt that the workmanship was very delicate at first glance, and the black PCB looked more advanced. Compared with Raspberry Pi 4B, the board area of licheepi 4A is slightly larger, with more interface resources, and it also has an NPU with 4TOPS @Int8 computing power and a GPU with 50GFLOP computing power, which enables the implementation of artificial intelligence algorithms in edge scenarios and efficient execution. In the official performance test, the extreme performance of licheepi 4A is comparable to that of Raspberry Pi 4B. Here, I boldly imagine that the hardware performance and ecology based on the RISC-V architecture in the near future will also be able to show off its muscles with ARM and X86. Unlike the integrated design of Raspberry Pi 4B, licheepi 4A adopts a structure in which the base board and the core board are separated from each other. This structure makes the upgrading of equipment more convenient, and only the core board equipped with the latest hardware needs to be replaced.

Board features: Lichee Pi 4A is a Linux development board composed of Lichee Module 4A core board. It uses TH1520 as the main control core and is equipped with an NPU with 4TOPS@int8 AI computing power. It supports dual-screen 4K display output, 4K camera access, dual Gigabit POE network ports and multiple USB interfaces. The audio is processed by the C906 core.

What's in the box: There's also a USB cable for power or downloading programs; a cooling fan, powered by a separate port; thermal grease, applied between the fan and the chip for better heat dissipation; and a 2.4G WiFi antenna. I don't know which one has a better signal than the onboard antenna.

After checking the official documentation, I learned that I need to use a 12V2A DC interface or a 5V3A USB interface (5V2A is a bit low) power adapter. I directly used the official power adapter of the Raspberry Pi 4B, which is a 5V3A plug-in power adapter.

The board comes with a system. According to the official documents, Licheepi 4A has been adapted to a wide range of system resources, including popular openwrt, andorid, and Ubuntu, etc. All image downloads can be found on the official wiki site: Image Collection - Sipeed Wiki

After receiving the board, connect it to the power supply and use HDMI to connect to the monitor first (the group recommends: do not use a mobile phone fast charging head, and do not use the HDMI interface to connect to a smart TV, which may cause voltage breakdown on the board)

Open the ssh interface and set the configuration file to allow root login

Since I didn't want to occupy the monitor when running experiments, I found some ways to connect to the command line.

Use the terminal to connect to the board under wifi: You can configure the board to connect to wifi, and then use ssh to connect to the development board on a computer under the same wifi

1) Configure the configuration file to automatically connect to Wi-Fi when the computer is turned on

sudo vim /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

//wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=CN

network={
    ssid="wifi名称"
    psk="wifi密码"
  	key_mgmt="WPA-PSK"
}

2) Use the command line to manage network services

sudo apt install networkmanager

After installing networkmanager, you can use nmcli, nmtui (graphical network configuration)

//重启网络服务
service network-manager restart

//搜索wifi
nmcli dev wifi

//连接wifi wlp3s0是网卡名称
nmcli dev wifi connect 'ssid名称' password '密码' iface wlp3s0

ifconfig

Use network cables to connect the boards:

Share the network that the computer is connected to with the Ethernet port

Path: Network Sharing Center-Properties-Share

Type in the command linearp-a

192.168.137.1The first address below is basically the address of the development board. If it is missing, re-plug the network cable.

Then use the ssh tool on the PC to connect

ssh username@host  -P port

Successfully connected to the development board

Burning of the new system: First prepare the image file to be downloaded on the computer

As you can see, the principle is to burn the development board through fastboot, which is very convenient. You should install the adb driver in advance, but I didn't see it in the tutorial. The Windows side needs to enter the advanced startup mode first and disable the digital signature. Only then can the given driver be installed normally.

At the same time, you need to modify the file path in the script. After connecting the board, double-click the script and wait for the machine to restart to enter the new system.

The typical log output of burning an image is the same as flashing an Android phone.