User manual
4D SYSTEMS Armadillo-43(T) – Linux based Computer Display Module
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Armadillo-43(T) – Linux based Computer Display Module
8) Please note that block size set to 4M will work
most of the time; if not, please try 1M,
although this will take considerably longer.
9) Also note that if you are not logged in as root
you will need to prefix this with sudo.
10) The dd command does not give any
information of its progress and so may appear
to have frozen; it could take more than five
minutes to finish writing to the card. If your
card reader has an LED it may blink during the
write process. To see the progress of the copy
operation you can run pkill -USR1 -n -x dd in
another terminal, prefixed with sudo if you
are not logged in as root. The progress will be
displayed in the original window and not the
window with the pkill command; it may not
display immediately, due to buffering.
11) Instead of dd you can use dcfldd. It will give a
progress report about how much has been
written.
12) You can check what's written to the SD card
by using dd from the card back to another
image on your hard disk, and then
running diff (or md5sum) on those two
images. There should be no difference.
13) Remove the SD Card from your PC, it is now
ready to use.
For Mac OS
(Credit - Instructions from Raspberry Pi website)
1) Connect the SD card reader with the SD card
inside. Note that it must be formatted in
FAT32.
2) From the Apple menu, choose About This
Mac, then click on More info...; if you are
using Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion then
click on System Report.
3) Click on USB (or Card Reader if using a built-in
SD card reader) then search for your SD card
in the upper right section of the window. Click
on it, then search for the BSD name in the
lower right section; it will look something like
'diskn' where n is a number (for example,
disk4). Make sure you take a note of this
number.
4) Unmount the partition so that you will be
allowed to overwrite the disk; to do this, open
Disk Utility and unmount it (do not eject it, or
you will have to reconnect it). Note that On
Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion, "Verify Disk"
(before unmounting) will display the BSD
name as "/dev/disk1s1" or similar, allowing
you to skip the previous two steps.
5) From the terminal run:
sudo dd bs=1m if=your_image.img
of=/dev/diskn
6) Remember to replace n with the number that
you noted before!
You should now have a SD card ready to use in the
Armadillo.
Standard Image (Not Recommended) 4.2.
A standard image of Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi
can be used for the Armadillo, with some
modifications made to it so it operates the on
board display.
Note, this is not specifically supported by 4D
Systems as 4D Systems has no influence over
images produced for the Raspberry Pi, and
therefore cannot guarantee compatibility.
Using a standard image will mean you miss out on
a number of benefits that come with the 4D
Systems image, however the module should still
be fully functional.
Simply download a Raspbian Image from the
Raspberry Pi website (Note: NOOBS is not
supported)
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/
Follow the same 7 instructions as found in the
previous section, and image a microSD card, but
this time using the Raspberry Pi image.
Once you have an image on the card, you need to
replace some of the files so the hardware is able to
be used. Don’t attempt to boot the card in the
Armadillo-43T yet, it will not work.
Download the ‘Boot Files Pack’ and ‘Kernel Pack’
from the Armadillo product page on the 4D
Systems website.
To convert a standard Raspbian image for the
Raspberry Pi so it will function on the Armadillo-
43T you first have to replace the main boot file.
This file is usually called "start.elf" and is in the FAT
(DOS) partition of the image. It is possible this file
may be called something else (some images use
"start_x.elf"). Replace the file with the "start.elf"
file from the ‘Boot File Pack’ archive, renaming it if
necessary.
This will only allow the system to boot and operate
the display. It will not allow the use of the touch
screen. For this a different set of kernel drivers are
needed. You will need to manually replace your
current kernel with the version from the ‘Kernel
Pack’ archive. Therefore you are likely to require a
USB Keyboard.