Industrial Communications SDK

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Introduction

The Industrial Communications SDK enables real-time industrial communications for TI processors. Industrial communication is typically handled by the Programmable Real-Time Unit Industrial Communication Subsystem (PRU-ICSS). The PRU-ICSS is a co-processor subsystem containing Programmable Real-Time (PRU) cores and Ethernet media access controllers (EMACs), which implement the low level industrial Ethernet and fieldbus protocols through firmware.

These devices currently include

• AM2431, AM2432, AM2434
• AM2634, AM2634-Q1
• AM6411, AM6412, AM6421, AM6422, AM6441, AM6442

Features

• Out of Box peripheral and application Examples

  • Application Level Examples: Motor Drives, Industrial Communications etc.

• Protocol stacks and middleware

  • Various Industrial Protocol Stacks

• Industrial protocol firmware

  • ICCSG, ICSSM etc.

Overview

Learn

Usage

Prerequisites

Supported HOST environments

• Windows 10 64bit
• Ubuntu 18.04 64bit

Clone and build from GIT

Repo Tool Setup

Industrial Communications SDK has multiple components (in multiple repositories) and dependencies (like compiler, CCS and other tools). We use repo tool from Google to manage these multiple repositories. Currently there is no support for native windows shells like CMD or Powershell. This will be added at a later point. Windows users can rely on Git Bash for the repo setup. Follow the below mentioned steps to setup repo tool:

Make sure python3 is installed and is in your OS path.

• Linux: Do the following in terminal

  curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
  chmod a+x ~/bin/repo
  echo "PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
  source ~/.bashrc

• Git-Bash (Windows) Make sure that python 3 is callable as python from CMD. Do below in Git-Bash

  mkdir -p /c/ti
  curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > /c/ti/repo
  echo "alias repo=\"winpty python /c/ti/repo\"" >> ~/.bashrc
  source ~/.bashrc

Cloning The Repositories

To clone the repositories using repo tool, do below in your workarea folder:

Note that depending on the SoC you're working with, the components you clone might be slightly different. So please choose the manifest folder according to the SoC of your interest. For example, we are showing for am263x below.

repo init -u https://github.com/TexasInstruments/industrial-comms-manifests.git -m am243x/dev.xml -b main

Note that repo uses symbolic links. So if you're on Windows and do not have permissions to create symbolic links, the above command might fail for you. So you can either enable them (refer this link) or use the experimental worktree feature of repo. To do this, initialize the repo like so:

repo init --worktree -u https://github.com/TexasInstruments/industrial-comms-manifests.git -m am243x/dev.xml -b main

After the repo is initialized, do a

repo sync

This should clone all the repositories required for Industrial Communications SDK development. Now download and install the dependencies.

Downloading And Installing Dependencies

Note that the dependencies are also soc specific, here we take an example of am263x. You can replace that with the SoC of your choice like the repo init step.

To download and install dependencies in linux, follow the below steps:

Run the following from the same location where you have industrial_comms and industrial_comms_setup folders.

./industrial_comms_setup/am243x/download_components.sh

This will install all the required dependencies including Code Composer Studio (CCS). The script assumes that industrial_comms folder is in the same location from where you have invoked the script, and that dependencies are installed into ${HOME}/ti location. If these defaults don't work for you, please pass these as arguments to the script like

./industrial_comms_setup/am243x/download_components.sh --install_dir=/path/to/tools

OR

./industrial_comms_setup/am243x/download_components.sh --industrial_comms_sdk_folder=/path/to/industrial_comms/folder

and so on. For a complete list of arguments you can pass to the script, please run

./industrial_comms_setup/am243x/download_components.sh -h

In windows the dependencies has to be manually installed. Given below are the steps:

1. Download and install Code Composer Studio v12.1 from here

   • Install at default folder, C:\ti

2. Download and install SysConfig 1.14.0 from here

   • Install at default folder, C:/ti

3. Download and install GCC for Cortex A53 and ARM R5 from below link (only needed for AM64x developers)

   • GNU-A
   • GNU-RM
   • Install at default folder, C:/ti

4. Download and install Node.js v12.18.4 LTS

• Go to the NodeJS Website and use the installer to download and install v12.18.4 of node. Install in the default directory.
• After successful installation, run an npm ci inside the industrial_comms folder like so:

  $ cd industrial_comms/
  $ npm ci
  $ cd ../

  This should install the node packages required for the SDK.

1. Download and install doxygen,
   • Tested with 1.8.20
     • Download the correct version of doxygen for windows from here
     • Install and add the install path, typically, C:/Program Files/doxygen/bin to your windows PATH
   • Test by doing below on the command prompt

     $ doxygen -v
     1.8.20 (<commit SHA-ID>)
     

Installing OpenSSL

Some of the SDK signing scripts are dependent on OpenSSL v1.1.1. The v1.1.1 is important, OpenSSL 3.0 is not compatible with the current signing scripts of SDK.

In Windows,

• Download v1.1.1 from here
• You can install the "light" version which is smaller download size
• Install to default path, which is C:/Program Files/OpenSSL-Win64/
• When prompted select option to install binaries to /bin folder of installed path instead of Windows system path.
• Add path to OpenSSL, to your environment "Path" variable in windows
  • C:\Program Files\OpenSSL-Win64\bin

In Linux,

• There is a chance that OpenSSL is already installed. If not, here are the steps:

• If you have Ubuntu 18.04, do below in Linux Ubuntu shell to install openssl -$ sudo apt install openssl

  If you have an Ubuntu version higher than that, make sure that you install the 1.1.1 version. You can get the 1.1.1 packages from here. The packages required are openssl, libssl and libssl-dev

Test openssl version by running openssl version on a command prompt and make sure there is no error. Example output is shown below,

  C:\> openssl version
  OpenSSL 1.1.1k  25 Mar 2021

Now that the dependencies are installed, you can start the repositories with a default branch dev by doing below:

repo start dev --all

---

NOTE

• In Linux, you will need to run $HOME/ti/ccs{version}/ccs/install_scripts/install_drivers.sh script for setting COM port accesses correctly. Also add your user to groups tty and dialout. You can do

  sudo adduser $USER tty
  sudo adduser $USER dialout
  

• Please use the industrial communication libraries from the sdk installer due licensing restrictions.

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Building the SDK

Basic Building With Makefiles

---

NOTE

• Use gmake in windows, add path to gmake present in CCS at C:\ti\ccsxxxx\ccs\utils\bin to your windows PATH. We have used make in below instructions.
• Unless mentioned otherwise, all below commands are invoked from root folder of the "industrial_comms" repository.
• Current supported device names are am64x, am243x, am263x, am273x and awr294x
• Pass one of these values to "DEVICE="
• You can also build components (examples, tests or libraries) in release or debug profiles. To do this pass one of these values to "PROFILE="

---

1. Run the following command to create makefiles, this step is optional since this is invoked as part of other steps as well,

   make gen-buildfiles DEVICE=am263x

2. To see all granular build options, run

   make -s help DEVICE=am263x

   This should show you commands to build specific libraries, examples or tests.

3. Make sure to build the libraries before attempting to build an example. For example, to build a Hello World example for AM263x, run the following:

   make -s -j4 libs DEVICE=am263x PROFILE=debug

   Once the library build is complete, to build the example run:

   make -s -C examples/hello_world/am263x-cc/r5fss0-0_nortos/ti-arm-clang all PROFILE=debug

4. Following are the commands to build all libraries and all examples. Valid PROFILE's are "release" or "debug"

   make -s -j4 clean DEVICE=am263x PROFILE=debug
   make -s -j4 all   DEVICE=am263x PROFILE=debug