Mender OTA integrated with Toradex Verdin iMX8M Plus SOM and Yocto

The embedded engineering experts at Mender’s partner Konsulko have completed a reference integration project: it ports Mender to the Toradex Verdin iMX8M Plus SoM and the exact steps to build images for it and the Dahlia carrier board using the long-term support release of the Yocto Project and the Toradex BSP.

Konsulko software engineer Leon Anavi led the integration project and he presented the full integration at the November 2022 Yocto Project Summit.

Hardware specifications of Toradex Verdin iMX8M

The Toradex Verdin iMX8M comes with powerful specifications including an NXP i.MX 8M Plus applications processor, 4 Gbytes of RAM, 16 Gbytes of Flash and integrated connectivity in the forms of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It also comes with the Toradex Easy Installer pre-installed. This is a Linux-based application with a GUI to support the installation of images on the internal flash memory of Toradex SOMs from USB keys or over a network. The GUI can be accessed directly with a keyboard, a mouse and a monitor, or remotely via VNC.

How does the integration work?

Three Yocto / Open Embedded BSP layers were used to make the integration:

Meta-toradex-nxp Meta-mender Meta-mender-toradex-nxp (with u-boot patches for each supported device)

Meta-mender and Meta-mender-toradex-nxp are used in combination and the Mender integration checklist is tested and performed. A Github pull request is then submitted to the meta-mender-community and then the exact steps on how to build a demo image for the new board integration using the Yocto Project and Open Embedded are shared in a step by step integration tutorial can be accessed here in the board integrations section of the Mender Hub

Leon sent special thanks to the meta-mender-community maintainers Josef Holzmayr, Head of Developer Relations at Mender and Drew Moseley, Technical Solutions Architect, Toradex.

About Konsulko

Headquartered in San Jose, California, Konsulko is a leading services company in embedded Linux and open source software, specializing in build, design, development and training services. The company has a distributed engineering presence across the World.