Banana Pro Blueprints

366 Pages·2015·9.621 MB·English

by  Ruediger Follmann

[ 1 ]
Banana Pro Blueprints
Leverage the capabilities of Banana Pro with exciting
real-world projects
Ruediger Follmann
Tony Zhang
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Banana Pro Blueprints
Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: December 2015
Production reference: 1211215
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78355-238-2
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Authors Project Coordinator
Ruediger Follmann Izzat Contractor
Tony Zhang
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Reviewers
Lalith Gallage
Nikolaos Margaris Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Paul Mundt
Rob Seder
Graphics
Disha Haria
Commissioning Editor
Edward Bowkett
Production Coordinator
Conidon Miranda
Acquisition Editor
Meeta Rajani
Cover Work
Conidon Miranda
Content Development Editor
Anish Sukumaran
Technical Editor
Chinmay S. Puranik
Copy Editor
Sonia Michelle Cheema
About the Authors
Ruediger Follmann was born in 1968 in Germany. He studied electrical
engineering at RWTH Aachen, Germany, and received his PhD from the University
of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He has worked for IMST GmbH, Germany, for more
than 20 years, where he heads the RF circuits and system integration department.
IMST is a design and development company with more than 170 employees. He uses
embedded boards in many different projects, for example, in order to control MMICs
or hybrid electronics. Follmann is the author of many technical articles as well as Das
Raspberry Pi Kompendium, Springer.
Tony Zhang was born in 1990 in China. He studied control science and
engineering at HIT, China, and received his master's degree in 2015. Since 2014,
Tony has been working with LeMaker community, where he is the cofounder and
is heading the R&D department.
About the Reviewers
Lalith Gallage is a charted IT professional with more than 12 years of experience
in information communication technology, including embedded control designing,
industrial automation, and CMS (SharePoint Server, Joomla, sensenet, Umbraco, and
Odoo) customization. He has published several articles on the CodeProject website
(http://www.codeproject.com/) and enjoys writing in his free time.
He is currently working at Sri Lanka Telecom and is a guest lecturer at many leading
institutes in Sri Lanka in the fields of microcontroller and C# programming. In his
free time, he likes to relax in his aquaponic garden.
He has expertise in several known languages, such as C++, C#, Python, PLSQL, PHP,
and ASP.NET. He is also proficient in certain hardware platforms such as Arduino,
Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, Rabbit, and PIC.
His professional qualifications include a masters degree in IT from Cardiff
Metropolitan University, UK, BIT from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka,
national diploma in engineering sciences (electronics and telecommunication) from
Sri Lanka, and CITP from the UK.
Nikolaos Margaris currently works as a senior frontend developer on a
collaboration and communication software that uses AngularJS and NodeJS. He
enjoys clean and performant JavaScript code and tests it too. In his spare time, he
likes reading about new technologies and wandering through the IoT world. Good
music and some retro PC/console games have always added flavor to his life.
Reviewing this book was an enjoyable experience for him, and he hopes to come
across more opportunities like this one. You can find out more about him at
http://www.nikolaosmargaris.gr/.
All thanks to my soul mate, Vaya. Her love and patience gives
meaning to my life.
Paul Mundt is the founder and managing director of Adaptant Solutions AG, a
software and solutions company focused on providing adaptable technologies and
solutions needed to enable cross-sectorial data utilization and exploration in an
evolving data regulation and compliance landscape.
Previously, Paul was the CTO of OS & Virtualization, and director of the system
software department at Huawei's European Research Center, leading an R&D
department responsible for the future OS and virtualization strategy and
architecture, focusing on the areas of heterogeneous systems, convergence
of Cloud and HPC, and the future data center architectures.
Earlier, at Renesas, he was responsible for establishing both the initial open source
strategy and vision, while leading the organization to consistently become one
among the top 10 contributors to the Linux kernel, resulting in wide-reaching system
software and IP consolidation across a diverse MPU/MCU product portfolio.
He has more than 15 years of experience in both Linux kernel development and
technology management across a diverse range of domains (HPC, embedded,
enterprise, and carrier grade). He has also previously worked for Nokia, TimeSys,
and MontaVista in various technical and leadership positions.
Rob Seder has been involved in information technology for over 20 years. He
has been a technophile and geek from an early age. His day job primarily involves
working on Microsoft .NET technologies, but he also invests heavily in Linux, Mac,
IoT, automation, 3D printing, and other interesting infrastructures or development
technologies. Rob has mostly worked in financial and insurance industries over the
years, and he enjoys keeping himself up to date with the most current technologies
that are available.
You can find Rob's blog at http://blog.robseder.com or contact him at @RobSeder
on Twitter.
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers,
and more
For support files and downloads related to your book, please visit www.PacktPub.com.
Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and
ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and
as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch
with us at [email protected] for more details.
At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up
for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books
and eBooks.
TM
https://www2.packtpub.com/books/subscription/packtlib
Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital
book library. Here, you can search, access, and read Packt's entire library of books.
Why subscribe?
• Fully searchable across every book published by Packt
• Copy and paste, print, and bookmark content
• On demand and accessible via a web browser
Free access for Packt account holders
If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access
PacktLib today and view 9 entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for
immediate access.

Table of Contents
Preface ix
Chapter 1: Introduction to Banana Pro 1
Banana Pro 2
Specifications of Banana Pro 3
Banana Pro onboard LEDs 9
Getting started 9
The first boot 12
Available operating systems for Banana Pro 13
Android 14
Linux 15
The FEX file 18
Transferring an OS to a hard disk 23
Add-ons 27
The LCD module 27
The 7-inch LCD step-by-step guide 28
The camera module 33
A step-by-step guide to the camera module 34
Cases 36
GPIO add-ons 38
An onboard microphone 39
Summary 40
Chapter 2: Programming Languages 41
Basic principles 42
Remote connections 42
Secure Shell 42
Using xrdp for remote desktop connection 43
Basic requirements for programming Banana Pro 44
Editors 45
[ i ]