BBGW First Impressions

[Carl Johnson]

I've been playing with the BeagleBone Green Wireless over the last few days, and it's an awesome piece of hardware.  I've been using older BeagleBones for the last few years, and it's always been annoying having to add a USB hub and two dongles if you want both WiFi and Bluetooth.  Now both capabilities are built into the board and there's no need for a hub anymore with four onboard USB ports.

For those of you using this board with either the 5/13/2016 or 5/31/2016 images (bone-debian-8.4-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-13-4gb.img.xz or bone-debian-8.4-seeed-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-31-4gb.img.xz), I've noticed that the bluetooth device doesn't appear until you manually run "bb-wl18xx-bluetooth" ("hcitool dev" comes up empty until you do this).

I've also noticed that trying to install additional packages can screw things up.  For example, if you run "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get install nfs-common" it borks the wifi.  I started getting "wlcode: ERROR ELP wakeup timeout" errors after doing this and couldn't figure out how to recover.  Perhaps the package locations are misconfigured or not fully populated?

In any case, I look forward to a bright future for this board.  Any other first impressions?

 

[Robert Nelson]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 7:51 AM, Carl Johnson <bony...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been playing with the BeagleBone Green Wireless over the last few days,
> and it's an awesome piece of hardware. I've been using older BeagleBones
> for the last few years, and it's always been annoying having to add a USB
> hub and two dongles if you want both WiFi and Bluetooth. Now both
> capabilities are built into the board and there's no need for a hub anymore
> with four onboard USB ports.
>
> For those of you using this board with either the 5/13/2016 or 5/31/2016
> images (bone-debian-8.4-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-13-4gb.img.xz or
> bone-debian-8.4-seeed-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-31-4gb.img.xz), I've noticed
> that the bluetooth device doesn't appear until you manually run
> "bb-wl18xx-bluetooth" ("hcitool dev" comes up empty until you do this).

This is a fun issue, it varies between board's but we need about a
20-25 second delay on startup before bluetooth can be loaded.. ;)

> I've also noticed that trying to install additional packages can screw
> things up. For example, if you run "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get
> install nfs-common" it borks the wifi. I started getting "wlcode: ERROR ELP
> wakeup timeout" errors after doing this and couldn't figure out how to
> recover. Perhaps the package locations are misconfigured or not fully
> populated?

The "ERROR ELP" is a little better if you upgrade to 4.4.11-ti-r29

cd /opt/scripts/tools/
sudo ./update_kernel.sh --ti-channel --lts-4_4

It looks to be a race condition between the wl18xx reset and the
modules/firmware loading..

> In any case, I look forward to a bright future for this board. Any other
> first impressions?

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[Carl Johnson]

Hi Robert - thanks for the feedback!

FYI - the 5/31 image that I mentioned above is already using the 4.4.11-ti-r29 kernel.  I tried running the update_kernel script in any case, and the behavior is unchanged: wifi is broken after you install nfs-common.

[Peter Hurley]

On 06/07/2016 06:21 AM, Robert Nelson wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 7:51 AM, Carl Johnson <bony...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> For those of you using this board with either the 5/13/2016 or 5/31/2016
>> images (bone-debian-8.4-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-13-4gb.img.xz or
>> bone-debian-8.4-seeed-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-05-31-4gb.img.xz), I've noticed
>> that the bluetooth device doesn't appear until you manually run
>> "bb-wl18xx-bluetooth" ("hcitool dev" comes up empty until you do this).
>
> This is a fun issue, it varies between board's but we need about a
> 20-25 second delay on startup before bluetooth can be loaded.. ;)

The ti-st driver is junk and not required for bluetooth only.
Sorry but that's really all I can say about it.

[jon...@cmteknik.se]

Hi

The ti-st driver is junk and not required for bluetooth only.
Sorry but that's really all I can say about it.

I currently have ti-st related problems. I've written about it here: https://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless_connectivity/wilink_wifi_bluetooth/f/307/t/524599

Can you share some information about how to use bluetooth on  BBGW *without* using ti-st?

[jonatan....@gmail.com]

I have solved it, using hci_uart instead of btwilink. The thread on that forum is updated.