BeaglePlay

Tags: chip:am62x arch:arm64 vendor:beagleboard

BeaglePlay is an open-hardware single-board computer from BeagleBoard.org based on the TI AM6254 SoC.

Features

TI AM6254 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 SoC
2 GiB DDR4
microSD and on-board eMMC boot options
USB-C debug port with serial console access
Four user LEDs
Gigabit Ethernet, USB, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth hardware on the board

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

Buttons and LEDs

BeaglePlay exposes four user LEDs connected to the AM62x main GPIO block:

LED	GPIO	Notes
USR0	GPIO1_22	Green user LED
USR1	GPIO1_23	Yellow user LED
USR2	GPIO1_24	Red user LED
USR3	GPIO1_25	Blue user LED

The current NuttX port does not yet provide functional GPIO-backed LED control. The CONFIG_ARCH_LEDS hooks are present as placeholders only.

Serial Console

Use the BeaglePlay DEBUG USB-C port and a host serial terminal at 115200 8N1.

Pin Mapping

The current bring-up uses the on-board debug interfaces rather than the expansion headers:

Interface	SoC signal	Notes
DEBUG USB-C	UART0	Default NuttX serial console
microSD	MMC1	Validated boot media for `nuttx.bin`
USR0-3	GPIO1_22 through 1_25	User LEDs, not yet driven by NuttX

Power Supply

Follow the BeagleBoard.org board documentation for the supported USB-C power inputs and peripherals. For NuttX bring-up, use the dedicated DEBUG USB-C port for the serial console and the normal power path for board power.

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 beagleplay:nsh
$ make -j$(nproc) CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-none-elf-

A successful build produces nuttx and nuttx.bin.

Flashing

The currently validated boot path loads nuttx.bin from a FAT partition on microSD using the BeaglePlay U-Boot prompt.

Format a microSD card with a single FAT32 partition.
Copy nuttx.bin to the root of the card.
Insert the card and connect the DEBUG USB-C serial cable.

Stop at the U-Boot prompt and run:

=> mmc dev 1 0
=> fatload mmc 1:1 0x82000000 nuttx.bin
=> go 0x82000000

Confirm the board reaches the NuttX prompt:
```
NuttShell (NSH) NuttX-12.x
nsh>
```

Configurations

beagleplay:nsh: Interactive NSH configuration for serial bring-up and shell access.
beagleplay:ostest: Hardware validation configuration that boots directly into ostest_main.