Online image builder for Angstorm Distribution

This is a website in which you can make images online for beagle board. just select beagleboard in the Machine section.

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/narcissus/

writing kernel

This is an interesting website, which has tutorials about creating kernel patches. The basic approach showed on this link can also be used when working with a git repository, not just kernel.

http://kapare.blogspot.com/2009/09/write-and-submit-your-first-kernel.html

Here is a tutorial regarding the Linux kernel.
http://www.kroah.com/lkn/

Quake 3

This is an example of how OMAP3 can be very useful for gaming purposes. This video is of quake 3 running on 720p resolution on ISEE IGEP2 platform. In this video, quake 3 is played using a keyboard and a mouse.

nthCode player demo

This video is of nthcode player running on beagle board. The I did uses a keyboard and mouse instead of a TV remote. Nthcode player demo works on only Revision b beagle board. The demo can be booted from an SD card and videos for this demo can be played from a USB flash drive. The file system of the USB flash drive has to be FAT.

In order to make this demo, I had to:
1) download the image from http://www.nthcode.com/player/player.html
2) prepare a bootable SD card. instructions on http://www.sakoman.com/OMAP3/preparing-a-bootable-sd-card.html
3) download all the boot files (MLO, u-boot, uImage-bb) on the "boot" partition of the SD card.
4) untar the "rootfs" in the "rootfs" partition.
5) Change the bootcmd: setenv bootcmd 'mmc init; fatload mmc 0 0x80300000 uImage-bb; bootm 0x80300000'
6) Change the bootargs:
Pico Projector: setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext3 omapfb.vram=1:4M,2:4M omapfb.mode=dvi:640x480MR-16@60'
HD monitor: setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext3 omapfb.vram=1:4M,2:4M omapfb.mode=dvi:hd720-24@60'
VGA monitor: setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext3 omapfb.vram=1:4M,2:4M omapfb.mode=dvi:640x480-16@60'
7) This demo only plays .flv, .avi and .mp4 videos. And only .mp3 audios.
8) The audio codec of the video I was playing was .aac So I had to change it to .mp3 using "super" http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
9) If you need to convert your video/audio files you can use the following steps, if not skip to the next step. Download & Install "super" and follow this steps in order to change video in "super"
- Change the output container format to AVI
- For video select the "Stream Copy" option
- For audio make sure the output audio codec is set to mp3
- Click "Encode (Active Files)" button.
- The resulting AVI file can be copied to a USB flash drive and played on nthplayer
10) In order to play video files, insert the flash drive after the demo is running. In the demo, go to sources and you will find the symbol of the flash drive under loca files. Click on that symbol, which will list the videos on the flash drive. Click on the video you want to play.

Beagle Board Begineer

In order to boot an image on beagle board, first I needed to download that image on a 2GB SD card. Some images are ready, all I need to do is write them on a SD Card. Some are not ready. For them, first I needed to install a partition table in that particular SD card in order to partition the SD card. Then, I needed to make one partition fat32 file system and the other ext3 file system. Then, I downloaded appropriate images on the appropriate partitions I made on the SD card. All I had to do is insert the SD card in beagle board and attach it to a linux pc using a serial cable in order to talk to the board. Some images require changing bootargs. I used minicom to talk to the board. Here are some useful sites, which will help in preparing an image in a SD card and also about tips to use minicom.

For discussions regarding beagle board:
1. http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard?lnk=srg
2. http://beagleboard.org/discuss

For information on creating SD card images:
1. http://www.sakoman.com/OMAP3/preparing-a-bootable-sd-card.html
2. http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners

Using minicom
1. http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/modem-minicom.html
2. http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners

Recently Played Demo: I recently played nthcode player demo on beagleboard. I used a HD monitor to run this demo. I am trying to run this on a pico projector.

More information about nthcode player
1. http://www.nthcode.com/player/player.html
2. http://groups.google.com/group/nthcode-player-discussion?lnk=

More interesting images:
1. http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/browse_thread/thread/3156ba8903dac3f4
2. http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/browse_thread/thread/416792e2a7155c02
3.http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/browse_thread/thread/84adc725e44e72fb

You can even find a list of interesting projects from beagle board contest:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/contest#Contest_projects