4D SYSTEMS Armadillo-43(T) – Linux based Computer Display Module
© 2015 4D SYSTEMS Page 7 of 22 www.4dsystems.com.au
Armadillo-43(T) – Linux based Computer Display Module
4. Getting Started
The Armadillo is designed to use the Armadillian
Operating System, which is an image from 4D
Systems, built from source and specifically
customized to suit the Armadillo and touch screen
operation. Alternatively a standard Raspbian
image could be used, such as one from the
Raspberry Pi website. Using a standard Raspbian
image will require modifications of that image in
order to make it compatible for use with the
Armadillo, and not all features will be available.
4D Systems Image (Recommended)
4.1.
4D Systems has built and customised an image
from source to cater for the needs of the
Armadillo. It is very similar to Raspbian, and
includes changes such as a custom VC4 firmware
(start.elf), customised Kernel to allow for a driver
in the kernel for the Touch Screen, and then minor
modifications to optimise the display content to fit
on the 480x272 display, along with custom
applications such as Armadillo-config, which is
used to configure various aspects of the system
using the touch screen.
The latest image is available for download from
the Armadillo product page on the 4D Systems
website.
Once downloaded and extracted the zip archive,
the image inside should be loaded onto a 4GB or
higher capacity microSD card.
For Windows
Using the Win32DiskImager tool, available for
download from:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
1) Insert the microSD card into your card reader
and check which drive letter was assigned.
2) Download the Win32DiskImager utility from
the Sourceforge Project page mentioned
above.
3) Extract the executable from the zip file and
run the Win32DiskImager utility; you may
need to run the utility as administrator. Right-
click on the file, and select Run as Admin.
4) Select the image file you extracted above.
5) Select the drive letter of the microSD card in
the device box. Be careful to select the correct
drive; if you get the wrong one you can
destroy your data on the computer's hard
disk! If you are using a microSD or SD card slot
with an Adaptor in your computer and can't
see the drive in the Win32DiskImager window,
try using a cheap microSD adaptor in a USB
port.
6) Click Write and wait for the write to complete.
7) Exit the imager and eject the SD card.
For Linux
(Credit - Instructions from Raspberry Pi website)
1) Run df -h to see what devices are currently
mounted.
2) If your computer has a slot for SD cards, insert
the card. If not, insert the card into an SD card
reader, then connect the reader to your
computer.
3) Run df -h again. The new device that has
appeared is your SD card. The left column
gives the device name of your SD card; it will
be listed as something like:
/dev/mmcblk0p1 or /dev/sdd1
The last part (p1 or 1 respectively) is the
partition number but you want to write to the
whole SD card, not just one partition.
Therefore you need to remove that part from
the name for example,
/dev/mmcblk0 or /dev/sdd as the device for
the whole SD card. Note that the SD card can
show up more than once in the output of df; it
will do this if you have previously written an
image to this SD card, because images
typically have more than one partition.
4) Now that you've noted what the device name
is, you need to unmount it so that files can't
be read or written to the SD card while you
are copying over the SD image.
5) Run umount /dev/sdd1, replacing sdd1 with
whatever your SD card's device name is
(including the partition number).
6) If your SD card shows up more than once in
the output of df due to having multiple
partitions on the SD card, you should
unmount all of these partitions.
7) In the terminal, write the image to the card
with the command below, making sure you
replace the input file if= argument with the
path to your .img file, and the /dev/sdd in the
output file of= argument with the right device
name. This is very important, as you will lose
all data on the hard drive if you provide the
wrong device name. Make sure the device
name is the name of the whole SD card as
described above, not just a partition of it; for
example sdd, not sdds1 or sddp1;
or mmcblk0, not mmcblk0p1.
dd bs=4M if=path_of_your_image.img
of=/dev/sdd