i.MX8 - Nitrogen8M - Getting Started - Loading Pre-built Images

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Nitrogen8M
Overview Getting Started Selecting Boot Mode System Setup Software Support Loading pre-built images Yocto Support Building Yocto Installing an Image Alternative image loading Customizing Boot Sequence Android Support Building Android Installing an image System Recovery
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For the Nitrogen8M board, there are pre-built images ready for download. This page will provide a guide for getting images and loading them into the board.

Android

Getting Image

The image can be downloaded in the following link, this image is provided by Boundary Devices.

Android Oreo 8.1

Flashing Image

In order to load the image into the board, the fastboot mode is required. This mode is activated by pushing the green button with the label fastboot.

While the board is in fastboot mode, connect the Nitrogen8M board to the host machine through the micro-USB port.

Finally, flash the image into the eMMc with the following commands:

unzip o810-nitrogen8m-*.zip -d o810-nitrogen8m
cd o810-nitrogen8m
o810-nitrogen8m$ ./device/boundary/scripts/flash_fastboot.sh

Yocto

Getting Image

There are not official pre-built images with Yocto yet but you can build your own image with limited software support, see the section Building Yocto for mode details.

Flashing Image

Yocto has several image types, the default type for old Yocto versions was sdcard format but the latest Yocto version has moved to wic format. Both formats can be flashed to SD card or USB stick, but the Nitrogen8M does not have SD card support.

The next command will flash the image into an USB stick:

sudo bmaptool copy image.extension /dev/sdX --nobmap

Ubuntu

Getting Image

The image can be downloaded in the following link, this image is provided by Boundary Devices.

Ubuntu Bionic

Flashing Image

Before flashing check if your board is running U-Boot version 2018.07. This version is required for booting Ubuntu.

Install the following packages before flashing the board:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install fastboot android-tools-fastboot

Now, enable fastboot mode in the board by pushing the green button labeled as fastboot and connect the Nitrogen8M to a host machine.

Test the fastboot mode with the next command, the board's MAC address should be displayed.

sudo fastboot devices -l

Finally, flash the image with the following commands:

sudo fastboot flash gpt gpt_8G.img
sudo fastboot flash rootfs rootfs_8G.simg

After booting again, the image will have 2 users (root and ubuntu) with the password Boundary.