Wandboard

The Wandboard is a low-cost Cortex-A9 board created by a group of engineers in their free time that work with ARM architecture based solutions on a daily basis. The spirit that drove the development was the fact that many of the development boards they see today are fun to play with but there is no flexibility in place to design a product beyond the initial stage. With the Wandboard they try to overcome this by choosing a System-on-Module that works with an easy to design few layer baseboard that everyone can design and make with beginning engineering knowledge. The Wandboard is developed as a non-for-profit board and all engineers connected to the development do so on a volunteer basis.

The Wandboard is available in three different configurations:

  1. Wandboard Solo
    • Single core i.MX6 Processor
    • 512MB RAM
  2. Wandboard Dual
    • Dual core i.MX6 Processor
    • 1GB RAM
    • 802.11n wireless and bluetooth
  3. Wandboard Quad
    • Quad core i.MX6 Processor
    • 2GB RAM
    • 802.11n wireless and bluetooth
    • SATA

All versions of the Wandboard share the following features:

  • 3.5mm line out, line in, and microphone
  • S/PDIF optical audio out
  • HDMI
  • DB9 serial port
  • Gigabit ethernet
  • USB and USB OTG ports
  • 2 micro-SD slots
  • Camera interface and expansion headers
Architecture
ARMv7 Cortex-A9
Processor
Freescale i.MX6 1.0GHz
RAM
2GB
SD
Micro SD
USB
1
SATA
1
Ethernet
Gigabit
Wireless
B/G/N, Bluetooth

Install to a micro SD card

Replace sdX in the following instructions with the device name for the SD card as it appears on your computer.

  1. Zero the beginning of the SD card:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=8
  2. Start fdisk to partition the SD card:
    fdisk /dev/sdX
  3. At the fdisk prompt, create the new partition:
    1. Type o. This will clear out any partitions on the drive.
    2. Type p to list partitions. There should be no partitions left.
    3. Type n, then p for primary, 1 for the first partition on the drive, 8192 for the first sector, and then press ENTER to accept the default last sector.
    4. Write the partition table and exit by typing w.
  4. Create the ext4 filesystem:
    mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX1
  5. Mount the filesystem:
    mkdir mnt
    mount /dev/sdX1 mnt
  6. Download and extract the root filesystem:
    wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz
    bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz -C mnt
  7. Download the boot.scr script for U-Boot and place it in the /boot directory:
    wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/imx6/boot/wandboard/boot.scr -O mnt/boot/boot.scr
  8. Unmount the partition:
    umount mnt
  9. Download and install the U-Boot bootloader:
    wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/imx6/boot/wandboard/SPL
    wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/imx6/boot/wandboard/u-boot.img
    dd if=SPL of=/dev/sdX seek=1 bs=1k
    dd if=u-boot.img of=/dev/sdX seek=69 bs=1k
  10. Insert the SD card into the Wandboard module (not the carrier board), connect ethernet, and apply 5V power.
  11. Use the serial console (with a null-modem adapter if needed) or SSH to the IP address given to the board by your router.
    • Login as the default user alarm with the password alarm.
    • The default root password is root.
  12. Initialize the pacman keyring and populate the Arch Linux ARM package signing keys:
    pacman-key --init
    pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm

Install the U-Boot package

  1. Remove the boot.scr file manually downloaded previously:
    rm /boot/boot.scr
  2. Install the U-Boot package:
    pacman -Sy uboot-wandboard
  3. When prompted, press y and hit enter to write the latest bootloader to the micro SD card.

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