Sipeed M1s DOCK (sipeed-m1sdock)

From postmarketOS
Sipeed M1s DOCK
Sipeed M1s DOCK sitting on a breadboard
Sipeed M1s DOCK sitting on a breadboard
Manufacturer Sipeed
Name M1s DOCK
Codename sipeed-m1sdock
Released 2022
Category testing
Pre-built images no
Original software FreeRTOS
Hardware
Chipset Bouffalo Lab BL808
CPU 1x T-Head C906, E907 and E902
GPU 2D Accelerator
Display 280x240 IPS (optional)
Storage 16MB SPI
Memory 64 MB PSRAM
Architecture riscv64
Type Development Board
Features
USB Networking
Flashing
Touchscreen
Display
WiFi
FDE
Mainline
Works
Audio
Bluetooth
Camera
Internal storage
USB OTG
Misc
Camera Flash
Memory Card
Ethernet
FOSS bootloader
Works

Sipeed M1s DOCK is a development board based on the Sipeed M1s module, it has two USB-C ports, a microphone, a white LED, an SD card slot and support for Wi-Fi 4, Bluetooth 5 (with LE). It runs FreeRTOS as the operating system.

Despite being a small board that fits on a breadboard, it has a MMU and can run Linux. A PoC Linux demo is available on Sipeed's Wiki.

1.69-inch IPS LCD and 2 MP camera is not included, however Sipeed sells a bundle that include the M1s DOCK, Display and Camera.

Mainline Linux support is actively being developed by the OpenBouffalo community, and this pmOS port uses that.

Contributors

  • Danct12

Users owning this device


How to enter flash mode

  • BL808 Bootloader: Plug in the device then hold down BOOT and hit RST.
  • BL702 Bootloader: While holding the BOOT key, plug in the device.


Installation

Notice When the board is plugged into a computer, there should be two new serial device appears on the computer (mainly ttyACM0 and ttyACM1). If one is only shown, you will have to reflash the BL702 firmware.

Flash postmarketOS to SD card

Icon WARNING: Booting Linux from the SD card requires U-Boot to be installed on SPI Flash.
Icon WARNING: There may be incompatibilities with some SD card, it is recommended to try 32GB SD cards. This is currently being investigated by OpenBouffalo team.

The internal SPI flash is only 16MB, which isn't enough to fit a minimal postmarketOS installation. Even if it's possible through memory upgrades, it'll never be supported.

$ pmbootstrap init # vendor: sipeed, device: m1sdock
$ pmbootstrap install --sdcard=/dev/sdcard # replace /dev/sdcard with the main block device of the SD card reader

The first boot takes longer, as the root partition gets resized to fit the whole SD card. DO NOT REBOOT, POWER OFF OR UNPLUG THE BOARD WHILE IT IS RESIZING.

Install U-Boot to SPI

The Sipeed M1s firmware by default does not have any SD card functionality. In order to boot to Linux on the SD card, U-Boot needs to be installed.

BLDevCube - MCU

  • Go to the MCU tab
  • Set the following:
    • M0 Group [Group0] Image Addr [0x58000000] m0_lowload_bl808_m0.bin]
    • D0 Group [Group0] Image Addr [0x58100000] d0_lowload_bl808_d0.bin]
  • Set port to /dev/ttyACM1 and hit 'Create & Download'

When it finishes, switch to IOT tab.

BLDevCube - IOT

  • Enable 'Single Download', set Address with 0x800000, choose bl808-firmware.bin
  • Click 'Create & Download' again and wait until it's done

If you're having trouble following the text-based guide, check out these images:

Once everything is done, use PuTTY or Minicom and connect to the lower serial port (/dev/ttyACM0) with baudrate 2000000 8n1. Then hit the RST button on the board, if you see U-Boot then it is installed!

See also