Introduction to Embedded Linux Part 1 - Buildroot | Digi-Key Electronics

Linux is a powerful operating system that can be compiled for a number of platforms and architectures. One of the biggest draws is its ability to be customized for an application. Tools like Buildroot, OpenWRT, and Yocto Project help us create custom Linux distributions for embedded systems.

In this video series, we will explore Buildroot and the Yocto Project. We also demonstrate how you might develop applications for embedded Linux. We will not dive into the specifics of how each of these systems work but give you a good starting place so you can read or watch more advanced material about working with embedded Linux.

To start, we provide some reasons and examples as to why you might want to use embedded Linux over other platforms, such as bare-metal programming on microcontrollers and an RTOS. Often, your application will dictate the use of one platform over another. Embedded Linux offers the ability to reuse high-level code written and tested by others that work across a variety of platforms. This can save you development time when you need things like networking, graphics, cryptography, audio, machine learning, etc.

We introduce Buildroot as one of the easiest tools to use for creating a custom Linux image. We demonstrate it by creating a Linux distribution for the STM32MP157D-DK1 single board computer. From there, we flash the distribution image onto an SD card and load Linux on the board, which allows us to log in with a serial terminal to do basic file manipulation and script writing.

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[maksimlepel]

I’m not native English speaker, but your pronunciation is perfect, I understand all words you speak, thank you

[ShakilShahadat]

The timing of this series couldn't be more perfect than this for me.

[thenoisyelectron]

YES! I am SOO happy to see this! Your STM32 series was a fantastic introduction to that micro controller family. If this series is even half as good as that then I am super excited!

[ItsGosho]

That is High Quality Content. It is worth creating a whole course even bigger than the tutorials that will be available with tasks and more detailed explanations!

[Factory]

This content is super high quality! Relevant, well considered, well presented = USEFUL!
Love it.

[electronichome]

Thanks Shawn. I will book this weekend mainly for your great tutors in the past months & years!

[PaulSykesMr]

Top marks for clarity. Nice to see what can be a complex subject communicated so clearly.

[MadRajibLab]

Thanks Shawn, for your efforts in making these videos.

[AhmetKizilay]

This is amazing. Looking forward to the next episode!

[chrislamb]

AWESOME! It took me the better part of the day to get this working on an STM32MP157C_DK2 - mostly due to many problems with VirtualBox, but man did I learn a lot! Thank you!

[MatteoCordray]

Great video! Build time for a raspberry pi zero w (v1.1) took my Thinkpad T470 about 1 hour and 9 minutes to run "make". Excited to learn more from this series!

[antonyalen]

I was just about to skip on the best Linux resource on the internet, thank god I clicked on this video. Please Please make a comprehensive series on the three (especially Yocto). Thanks alot guyz!

[rodboyce]

The introduction is great. I have worked with buildroot on and off for years. You can split the build into components, boot loaders, kernel, device-tree, root filesystem. This makes updating the kernel easy as long as you can just update each part on your SD card. You can make these components from the buildroot build command line. The best way to figure this out is 'make help' in the buildroot directory, there is a lot of information there. Hope I have not just taken the subject of an up and coming episode of this series. Keep up the good work I will be able to point co-works at this series instead of writing lots of documentation.

[RichardEricCollins]

I've been working with Yocto on and off for a couple of years. It is extremely powerful. Just finished a custom build for a client using i.MX6 ULL chip. Never would have been able to do it without yocto. Looking forward to the series. I still have a lot to learn, I think my work flow needs improving. I've notice over the last three years the need for developers to be using Linux to sky rocket. I'm coming into contact with companies where only the admin staff are on Windows. Management on Mac. Everyone else on Linux.

[masifamu]

Thank you very much for making suck an informative video on buildroot. you made it really easy to understand.

[greppurtorfason]

Excellent series - Thank you.
I use buildroot and yocto quite a bit, and welcome these videos.
Notes:
a) Append 'status=progress' to the dd line to have an indication of dd's progress.
b) When using usermod to add yourself to a group (here dialout), one needs to use 'newgrp dialout' to activate it - else you have to open a new terminal to get it activated.
Thanks a lot for all the work that went into making these videos!

[Andy_Rocket]

Thank you for a wonderful video, it gave me a good introduction, i finnaly got my first Raspberry, and im excited to get started

[astralxing]

For dd command use "status=progress" to actually see the progress of dd command .
Nice tutorial !!!

[joebro]

This was so clear and concise. Thank you!

[mixxx]

Very good. Looking forward to seeing next videos 👍👍👍