Hello
I have just installed a SD socket via SPI to Carambola
I have installed kmod-fs-ext4, kmov-fs-vfat, fdisk and kmod-mmc-spi
I wonder if there is any kmod for spi driver for rt2x00 and how to install it?
Thanks in advance.
Paco

There are SPI drivers. One for GPIO mode other for true SPI. We are working on true SPI mode MMC card support.

Hello Saulius
You reply mean that I can use the GPIO mode but not SPI mode, because you are working on the driver. don't you?
Thanks
Paco
www.tranquinet.com

I have this error:
root@OpenWrt:/# opkg install kmod-mmc-over-gpio
Installing kmod-mmc-over-gpio (2.6.39.4-4) to root...
Downloading http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ ... ramips.ipk.
Collected errors:
* satisfy_dependencies_for: Cannot satisfy the following dependencies for kmod-mmc-over-gpio:
* kernel (= 2.6.39.4-1-8ed5f069113be63865a072d80bbf746f) * kernel (= 2.6.39.4-1-8ed5f069113be63865a072d80bbf746f) * kernel (= 2.6.39.4-1-8ed5f069113be63865a072d80bbf746f) *
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package kmod-mmc-over-gpio.
I am using kernel 2.6.39.4
Any help please?
Thanks in advance

Hi

We're also intesrested in adding an SD card to Carambola over SPI to act as a second storage device. (the 8mb onboard ROM are not enough for our neds).

We found this tutorial on the OpenWRT site http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/mmc_over_gpio but haven't tried it yet.

From reading this thread it's not clear what has been achieved so far with Carambola and what is being developed. Could you please clarify:

1) If you've been able to successfully connect AND mount the SD card filesystem on Carambola?

2) If not, are the instructions on the OpenWRT website usable for Carambola or do you mean you're developing a solution for this?

Also do you have an idea of what kind of performance (read/write) we can expect using the SD card?

Thanks
Pedro.

I have tried mmc_over_gpio. Unfortunately unsuccessfully.

Basic workflow was like this:

Install modules:
> Kernel modules
>>SPI Support
>>kmod-spi-dev
>>kmod-spi-gpio
> Other modues
>> kmod-gpio-dev
>> kmod-mmc-over-gpio

Edit /etc/config/mmc_over_gpio on Carambola

config 'mmc_over_gpio'
option 'name' 'default'
option 'enabled' '1'
option 'DI_pin' '6'
option 'DO_pin' '5'
option 'CLK_pin' '4'
option 'CS_pin' '3'
option 'mode' '0'

* Note1: Connection is in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13
* Note2: I am still not 100% sure about DI_pin and DO_pin. It is possible they have to be crossed.

I tried several other "cheats" but none of them worked.

After spending some time I decided it is not worth digging this way, because you get only several Kb/s of speed and 100% CPU load. Instead we are working on real SPI-MMC driver.

Patience please

Hi Saulius

That's good news.

We're designing products ourselves and we'd really like to use Carambola as the "brain" in some of our robots (see here http://robosavvy.com).

The key things we like about Carambola are:
- Availability of 2x UARTs -- your solution for enabling the 2nd UART seems a bit of a hack but as long as it works... If there's any better solution we'd be happy to know.
- Chip antenna - again a major upside for mobile apps which our case.
- Possibility of extending storage with an SD card. - this is really a MUST have for us. So we're really looking forward for this.

Whenever you need encouragement, remember RobOSavvy: we really keen to develop stuff around Carambola (we already do stuf around the RT3050 but with other solutions; Carambola has much better features for us).

As a final note, what OpenWRt version/kernel version do you distribute for Carambola?
Is it one of the latest which incldes the new LuCi web configuration interface? The latest LuCi includes visual configuration of all Ethernet and WiFi (to work as Client or Host) and Graphical opkg which end users love.

We'll be looking forward for more developments!

Pedro.

Hi Pedro,

It is very kind that you are interested in Carambola.

1. Dual UART hack - sure there is better way of enabling it. I have this task in my to-do list. There will be instructions how to alter sources before compiling them.

2. If you need to use external antenna, ask for it upon ordering. I can't promise that it will be available, but we will do our best.

3. As I mentioned before we are working on fast SD card expansion. I will post instructions how to enable hardware SPI (which already works together with spi-test tool) and SD/MMC as soon as possible.

4. We update source files from OpenWRT every 2 months. We decided it is frequent enough to catch up with latest features. Today kernel was 2.6.39.4. And yes, it includes LuCi.

Hi Saulius

Thank you for your update and support.

Just to clarify: we like the Carambola antenna we don't like external antennas! so we love Carambola for having a chip antenna.

We found this tutorial for adding an SD card http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/mmc_over_gpio but from reading this thread I can understand this is SD card over GPIO which slow so the approach you're developing should be much better.

We will look forward for your developments

Regards
Pedro.