Re: Recommended dev board for beginner

It's highly likely that you won't see /dev/pruss* devices using .dts for
BeagleBone Black supplied with FreeBSD because they are disabled. I
created a DT overlay to enable them as described in [1] sometime ago
(it actually worked for me, so try it before any attempts to tweak/break
your .dtb). You'll be able to use pructl only after that.

[1] https://obsigna.com/articles/1530973669.html
[2] https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/how-to-enable-the-prus-on-the-beaglebone-black.61334/

Milan Obuch <freebsd-embedded@dino.sk> writes:

> On Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:18:40 +0300
> Lev Serebryakov <lev@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>
>> On 10.01.2023 11:32, Dmitry Salychev wrote:
>> 
>> > I'd recommend BeagleBone Black. It's relatively cheap, powerful,
>> > easy to boot FreeBSD, got a lot of GPIO pins and even two 32-bit
>> > 200 MHz microcontrollers in addition to the main processor.  
>> 
>>   Are here any instructions how to provide firmware for these
>> microcontrollers from booted FreeBSD and communicate with them?
>> 
>
> # cat /usr/ports/devel/libpru/pkg-descr 
> libpru is a library to interface with Programmable Realtime Units on
> FreeBSD. Currently only the Texas Instruments PRUs are
> supported. Those can be found in the AM18XX and AM33XX (BeagleBone
> Black) SoCs.
>
> # cat /usr/ports/devel/pructl/pkg-descr
> pructl is a tool to interface with libpru.
> It allows the user to reset the PRU, enable/disable the PRU and to
> upload programs to the PRU.
>
> Disclaimer: I did not test it, yet. That's what I found most probably
> relevant.
>
> How to write and compile/build programs for PRUs is not yet clear to
> me, TI's official page is to be found at their page -
> https://www.ti.com/tool/PRU-ICSS-INDUSTRIAL-SW - maybe someone could
> create something from it, I did not search any further.
>
> Regards,
> Milan


-- 
Dmitry Salychev