NOVA
som
M7Plus
Hardware User Manual
N.M7PLUS-250519-HUM-V1.1
Page 21 of 29
www.novasomindustries.com
Europe | Asia | America
6 Operational characteristics
6.1 Development system requirements
From the
NOVA
som
Industries web site
www.novasomindustries.com
the user can download the
NOVA
som
SDK to ease the development process for all the
NOVA
som
Industries boards.
The
NOVA
som
M7
Plus
board is currently supported at the boot level, and there is the standard BSP
support in form of device tree blob, or DTB.
The
NOVA
som
SDK is a virtual machine tool, running on a Fedora 20 core and based on VirtualBox.
The Virtual Machine is thus compatible with hosts based on Windows™, MacOS™ or Linux machines.
More detailed information about the installation process of the
NOVA
som
SDK can be found visiting the
NOVA
som
Industries web site at
www.novasomindustries.com
.
Normally, for a relatively relaxed development, an I5 host with 60 GBytes of free hard disk space and
8GBytes of RAM is enough.
For very heavy developments (as a complex 3D supported Qt file system or a Chromium X based
application) “the bigger is better”, so more RAM you can dedicate to the Virtual Machine the faster the
Virtual Machine will run.
A more than good situation is an I7 host with 16GB of RAM and 128GB of free disk space.
For connecting to the
NOVA
som
M7
Plus
console you need a serial port, and considering that on modern
desktop the serial port is not present a USB to Serial adapter is probably the only choice you have.
Finally, you need a µSD written with a basic file system, and a way to physically write the µSD itself.
You can download a µSD image from the
www.novasomindustries.com
page in the
NOVA
som
M7
Plus
dedicated section, where you can find all the information about how to write a µSD from the
NOVA
som
M7
Plus
image you just downloaded using your preferred host system.
6.2 The NOVAsom M7Plus console
In order to use the serial console available on the
NOVA
som
M7Plus board you need a serial terminal.
GtkTerm is a good choice for Linux users, Teraterm is a nice choice for Windows™ users, it’s up to MacOS™
users to understand which kind of terminal application they need.
The
NOVA
som
M7Plus port is on pins 8 and 10 of J9 connector at 3.3V level. An external translator or an
external USB to serial converter is required.
NOVA
som
Industries
can provide a suitable adapter (see code
240718) to drive the pins adequately. A serial port with a bit rate of 115200 with no flow control and 1 stop
bit is required to communicate with the
NOVA
som
M7Plus board.
The pins from where to connect the serial port are pin 8 of J9 (TXD from
NOVA
som
M7Plus board), pin 10
of J9 (RXD to
NOVA
som
M7Plus board) and pin 6 of J9 (the GND connection).
Just plug both the power supply and the serial port through the adapter and you will see the boot process
of your new
NOVA
som
M7Plus board.
