Deploy firmware on hybrid edge systems using containers
Introduction
Motivation
Hybrid container runtime
AVH device setup
Deploy firmware container using `containerd`
Deploy SMARTER Demo using K3s
Building the hybrid-runtime and container image (optional)
Next Steps

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Setup i.MX 8M Plus model

AVH offers a 30-day free trial to use.

  • Create an account in Arm Virtual Hardware
  • Once logged in, you should see a similar screen as shown in the image below. Click on Create device:

Image Alt Text:Screenshot of the Arm Virtual Hardware dashboard showing the Create device button in the top right cornerArm Virtual Hardware dashboard with Create device button

  • Next, click on Default Project:

Image Alt Text:Screenshot showing the project selection screen with Default Project highlightedProject selection screen

  • Select the i.MX 8M Plus device. The platform runs four Cortex-A53 processors:

Image Alt Text:Screenshot of the device selection list with i.MX 8M Plus highlighted, showing it contains four Cortex-A53 processors and one Cortex-M7Device selection showing i.MX 8M Plus

  • Select the Yocto Linux (full) (2.2.1) image and click Select:

Image Alt Text:Screenshot of the firmware image selection showing Yocto Linux (full) version 2.2.1 selectedFirmware image selection for Yocto Linux

  • Click on Create device (note that this could take few minutes):

Image Alt Text:Screenshot showing the device configuration summary with the Create device button at the bottomDevice creation confirmation screen

  • A console to Linux running on the Cortex-A should appear. Use “root” to login.

  • Find the IP address for the board model by running the following command (this will be needed to access the device using SSH):

    

        
        
ip addr

Image Alt Text:Screenshot of the AVH interface showing the running i.MX 8M Plus model with Linux console on the left and GUI display on the rightRunning AVH model with console and display

Note

The GUI on the right side may not work. You can safely ignore the error you see in the picture above and continue with the learning path.

Useful AVH tips

The Connect pane shows the different ways that you can connect to the simulated board. The IP address specified should be the same as that visible in the output of the ip addr command.

Image Alt Text:Screenshot of the AVH Connect pane displaying connection options including VPN configuration, Quick Connect with SSH commands, and the device IP addressAVH Connect interface with connection options

Quick Connect lets you connect SSH to the AVH model without having to use a VPN configuration. Similarly, you can replace ssh for scp to copy files from and to the virtual device. In order to use Quick Connect, it’s necessary to add your public key via the Manage SSH keys here link.

Image Alt Text:Screenshot showing the SSH key management interface where you can add or generate SSH keys for Quick Connect accessSSH key management interface

To generate an SSH key, you can run the following command on your machine:

    

        
        
ssh-keygen -t ed25519

Download the pre-built hybrid-runtime

Once your AVH model is set up, you can download the pre-built hybrid-runtime. This GitHub package contains the runtime and some necessary scripts:

    

        
        
wget https://github.com/smarter-project/hybrid-runtime/releases/download/v1.5/hybrid.tar.gz

Extract the files to /usr/local/bin using:

    

        
        
tar -C /usr/local/bin/ -xvf hybrid.tar.gz
Note

If you want to build the hybrid-runtime on your own, instructions can be found in the section of this learning path called Building the hybrid-runtime and container image .

Download Firmware container image

For this learning path, there is also a pre-built lightweight Docker container image available on GitHub. You can use it for the i.MX8M-PLUS-EVK board. The container image contains a simple FreeRTOS hello-world application built using the NXP SDK.

You can pull the pre-built image onto the AVH model by running the following command:

    

        
        
ctr image pull ghcr.io/smarter-project/hybrid-runtime/hello_world_imx8mp:latest

Make sure the container image was pulled successfully. An image with the name ghcr.io/smarter-project/hybrid-runtime/hello_world_imx8mp:latest should appear as an output to the following:

    

        
        
ctr image ls
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