PocketBeagle 2

Tags: chip:am62x arch:arm64 vendor:beagleboard

PocketBeagle 2 is a compact open-hardware board from BeagleBoard.org based on the TI AM6254 SoC.

Features

  • TI AM6254 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 SoC

  • 512 MiB DDR4

  • microSD boot with on-board QSPI boot firmware

  • USB-C debug/power connection with serial console access

  • Expansion headers for GPIO, I2C, SPI, UART, PWM, and ADC

  • User LEDs exposed by the board port

Current NuttX support is limited to early boot, the 16550 serial console, interactive NSH, and procfs mount during board bring-up. GPIO, functional LED control, I2C, SPI, MMC/SD runtime support, Ethernet, and USB runtime support are not implemented yet.

Buttons and LEDs

The current NuttX board port defines three logical user LEDs:

LED

Colour

Notes

USR0

Green

CONFIG_ARCH_LEDS placeholder

USR1

Amber

CONFIG_ARCH_LEDS placeholder

USR2

Red

CONFIG_ARCH_LEDS placeholder

These LEDs are not driven yet because AM62x GPIO support has not been added.

Serial Console

AM62x UART6 is routed to the USB-C debug interface. In the current NuttX configuration it is exposed as the first 16550 console device. Connect the USB-C cable to your host and open the enumerated serial port at 115200 8N1.

Pin Mapping

The current bring-up primarily relies on the on-board debug path:

Interface

SoC signal

Notes

USB-C debug

UART6

Default NuttX serial console

microSD

MMC1

Validated boot media for nuttx.bin

USR0-2

Board user LEDs

Not yet driven by NuttX GPIO support

Power Supply

PocketBeagle 2 can be powered through its USB-C connector. Follow the vendor documentation for external peripherals and header power limits during bring-up.

Installation

Install an aarch64-none-elf bare-metal toolchain and make sure its bin directory is on your PATH.

One option is the Arm GNU Toolchain.

Building NuttX

$ ./tools/configure.sh pocketbeagle2:nsh
$ make -j$(nproc) CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-none-elf-

A successful build produces nuttx and nuttx.bin.

Flashing

PocketBeagle 2 boots NuttX from microSD using the U-Boot firmware already present in on-board flash.

  1. Format a microSD card with a single FAT32 partition.

  2. Copy nuttx.bin and boards/arm64/am62x/pocketbeagle2/scripts/uEnv.txt to the root of the card.

  3. Insert the card and connect the USB-C debug cable.

  4. Power on the board and let U-Boot load the image automatically.

  5. Confirm the board reaches the NuttX prompt:

    NuttShell (NSH) NuttX-12.x
    nsh>
    

Configurations

pocketbeagle2:nsh

Interactive NSH configuration for serial bring-up and shell access.

pocketbeagle2:ostest

Hardware validation configuration that boots directly into ostest_main.