Getting Started with M4

Introduction

BPI-M4

Overview Banana Pi BPI-M4

Overview:Realtek RTD1395

 Banana Pi BPI-M4 use Realtek RTD1395 chp design ,it is a 64-bit quad-core A53 mini single board computer. It features 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB eMMC. It also has onboard WiFi for b/g/n/ac and BT 4.2. On the ports side, the BPI-M4 has 4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 USB TYPE C port, 1 HDMI port, 1 audio jack. support M.2 Key E PCIE 2.0 interface. 

• Read more about : Banana Pi BPI-M4

Key Features

• Realtek RTD1395 ARM Cortex-A53 Quad-Core 64 Bit
• Mali 470 MP4 GPU OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 H.264 H.265,2K4K
• Onboard1 GB DDR4 (option 2 GB)
• 8G eMMC flash (max 64 GB)
• 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet and RTL8821 module support Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/AC + Bluetooth 4.2
• USB 2.0 TYPE C
• M.2 Key E slot PCIE 2.0 and USB 2.0
• PoE function support

Development For Android

Install Android Image

Download the latest android image

Download BPI-M4 USB flash tool

Note：

 1. BPI-M4 Android8 image only support 2GB ddr board.
 2. BPI-M4 USB flash tool is a usb download tool for flashing android image to board emmc, and only support Windows platform.
 3. Make sure SW2 (board bottom near sd slot) switch to 1
 4. Read document/bananapi_m4_usb_download_tool_guide.doc before flashing image.

Development For Linux

Install Linux Image

Download the latest Linux image

Note:

1. Board SW2 (board bottom near sd slot) switch to 0

2. For the compatibility of new 2GB and 1GB board with one Linux image, the old batch (before May, 2020) 1GB board must update the spirom firmware, so it can run the new release image.

3. Login user/password: pi/bananapi or root/bananapi

Install Image to SD Card On Linux PC with bpi-tools

1.Install bpi-tools on your linux

    $ apt-get install pv
    $ curl -sL https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/bpi-tools/raw/master/bpi-tools | sudo -E bash

If you can't access this URL or any other problems, please go to bpi-tools repo and install this tools manually.

2.Insert your TF card into your PC

    $ bpi-copy xxx.img /dev/sdX

Actually bpi-copy is the same as this dd command

    $ sudo unzip -p xxx-bpi-m4-xxx.img.zip | pv | dd of=/dev/sdX bs=10M status=noxfer

Install Image to SD Card with Etcher on Windows, Linux and MacOS

Balena Etcher is an open source project by Balena, Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives

Install Image to EMMC with SD Ubuntu

1.Prepare a sd which is installed ubuntu image and bootup with sdcard

2.Copy emmc image to udisk, plug in board, then mount udisk.

3.After mount udisk, use bpi-copy command to install image on Emmc.

    $ sudo bpi-copy xxx-bpi-m4-xxx.img.zip /dev/mmcblk1

Actually bpi-copy is the same as this dd command

    $ sudo unzip -p xxx-bpi-m4-xxx.img.zip | pv | dd of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=10M status=noxfer

4.After success install, power off the board, eject the sdcard and poweron with emmc boot.

Enable SPI

Without device-tree overlay support, 40pin header SPI function is disabled default because pins multiplexing with uart2, it can be enabled according to this topic

https://forum.banana-pi.org/t/banana-pi-bpi-m4-how-to-get-i2c-and-spi-running-tutorial/12824

or by fdtput command without compile code. Make sure boot partition mounted before doing this.

 # fdtput -t s /media/pi/BPI-BOOT/bananapi/bpi-m4/linux/rtd-1395-bananapi-m4-2GB.dtb /spi@9801BD00 status okay
 # fdtput -t s /media/pi/BPI-BOOT/bananapi/bpi-m4/linux/rtd-1395-bananapi-m4-1GB.dtb /spi@9801BD00 status okay

Installed Docker

To have a test, if docker has installed in your image.

• sudo docker run --rm hello-world

EMAC

Use iperf3 to test gmac

1. On PC Terminal:

• Execute "iperf3 -s"

2. On M3 console:

• TCP test: "iperf3 -c serverIP"
• UDP test: "iperf3 -u -c serverIP"

Bluetooth

You have two ways to setup BT

1. Use commands to setup BT

• Use bluetoothctl tool to operate BT
• Execute "bluetoothctl"
• If you don't know how to use bluetoothctl, type "help", you will see more commands
• Execute these commands:

2. Use UI interface to setup BT

WiFi on M4

WiFi Client

You have two ways to setup WiFi Client

1. Use commands to setup WiFi client

• ip link set wlan0 up
• iw dev wlan0 scan | grep SSID
• vim /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

 network={    
 ssid="ssid"    
 psk="password"    
 priority=1 
 }

• wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
• dhclient wlan0

2. Use UI interface to setup WiFi Client