FriendlyCore (based on ubuntu-core with Qt)

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1 Introduction

FriendlyCore is a light Linux system without X-windows, based on ubuntu core, It uses the Qt-Embedded's GUI and is popular in industrial and enterprise applications.

Besides the regular Ubuntu core's features our FriendlyCore has the following additional features:

• it supports our LCDs with both capacitive touch and resistive touch(S700, X710, HD702, S430, HD101 and S70)
• it supports WiFi
• it supports Ethernet
• it supports Bluetooth and has been installed with bluez utilities
• it supports audio playing
• it supports Qt5.9 EGLES and OpenGL ES1.1/2.0 (Only for S5P4418/S5P6818)

2 Download Image Files

You can download an image file for a board on the board's wiki page

3 Work with FriendlyCore

3.1 FriendlyCore's User Accounts

• If your board is connected to an HDMI monitor you need to use a USB mouse and keyboard.
• If you need to do kernel development you need to connect a serial communication board to your board and access your board from a serial terminal.
• FriendlyCore User Accounts:

Non-root User:

   User Name: pi
   Password: pi

Root:

   User Name: root
   Password: fa

The system is automatically logged in as "pi". You can do "sudo npi-config" to disable auto login.

• Update packages

$ sudo apt-get update

3.2 Configure System with npi-config

The npi-config is a commandline utility which can be used to initialize system configurations such as user password, system language, time zone, Hostname, SSH switch , Auto login and etc. Type the following command to run this utility.

$ sudo npi-config

Here is how npi-config's GUI looks like:

3.3 Extend TF Card's Section

When FriendlyCore is loaded the TF card's section will be automatically extended.You can check the section's size by running the following command:

$ df -h

3.4 WiFi

You can use the NetworkManager utility in FriendlyCore to manager its network. You can run "nmcli" in the commandline utility to start it. Here are the commands to start a WiFi connection:

• Check device list

sudo nmcli dev

Note: if the status of a device is "unmanaged" it means that device cannot be accessed by NetworkManager. To make is accessed you need to clear the settings under "/etc/network/interfaces" and reboot your system.

• Start WiFi

sudo nmcli r wifi on

• Scan Surrounding WiFi Sources

sudo nmcli dev wifi

• Connect to a WiFi Source

sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" password "PASSWORD"

The "SSID" and "PASSWORD" need to be replaced with your actual SSID and password.If you have multiple WiFi devices you need to specify the one you want to connect to a WiFi source with iface
If a connection succeeds it will be automatically setup on next system reboot.

For more details about NetworkManager refer to this link: Use NetworkManager to configure network settings

3.5 Ethernet Connection

If a board is connected to a network via Ethernet before it is powered on it will automatically obtain an IP with DHCP activated after it is powered up. If you want to set up a static IP refer to: Use NetworkManager to configure network settings。

3.6 Bluetooth

If your board has an onboard bluetooth module you can search for surrounding bluetooth devices by running the following command:

hcitool scan

You can run "hciconfig" to check bluetooth's status.

3.7 Playing Audio

You can play an audio file by running the following command:

aplay -t raw -c 2 -f S16_LE -r 44100 /root/test.pcm

3.8 Run Qt Demo

Run the following command

$ sudo /opt/QtE-Demo/run.sh

Here is what you expect to observe. This is an open source Qt Demo:

3.9 Setup Program to AutoRun

You can setup a program to autorun on system boot with npi-config:

sudo npi-config

Go to Boot Options -> Autologin -> Qt/Embedded, select Enable and reboot.

3.10 Work with LCD

If you connect your board to an LCD with capacitive touch panel in general that LCD's calibration is not required. However if your LCD is one with resistive touch panel you will have to do calibration which is triggered by running "/usr/bin/setqt4env" on your first system booting.

If you want to re-calibrate your LCD with resistive touch panel you need to delete the calibration file by using the following command:

rm /etc/pointercal

After you reboot your system you will enter the calibration process.

4 Develop Qt Application

Please refer to: How to build Qt application

5 Q & A

• When I compile my Qt program I get a message complaining that linking to libraries such as libts and libz failed

Your arm-linux-gcc 4.9.3 may not include these library files. You need to try downloading the compiler again.

• Where should I get FriendlyCore's source code

We used the bin file released by UbuntuCore's official site. You can get its source code from http://packages.ubuntu.com/.

6 Update Log

6.1 July-20-2016

• Released English version

6.2 July-20-2017

• Added sections 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3

6.3 August-23-2017

• Updated section 4