Taming Parallella

[Olaf]

Just some feedback in making Parallella work.
I am not complaining, just returning feedback to other users can learn from it and the community can improve the user experience.

I got my Parrallella delivered, but I did not have a 5V power supply available with the correct plug.
I went to my collection of old power supplies and found one with a wrong connector. I cut the connector and took one from another power supply.
I probably shorted it because when I tested the power supply it gave no voltage.

So I went back to my electronics power supply and I have this regulator power supply beast.
I avoided this one since it has a turning knob and I don't want over-voltage by accident.
I finally powered up Parallella and I see 2 green led's and the ethernet cable led turn green.

When I scanned the network I could not find parallella.
Now here is the issue, since I have never seen a Parallella work, I have, no clue what is normal.
I unplugged the power and plugged back again, and suddenly I only have only one green blinking led.
I thought I fried the board. and gave up.

Later I tried again, and this time 2 green leds and the ethernet green.
After browsing the forum I discovered that 1 blinking green lead means not enough amperages.
I looked in disbelieve since I have this big giant power supply. Then I looked at the power supply lettering and it turns out to be 2A with a peak of 2.3A.
So I believe that when the power supply is cold it barely could provide enough amperage, when it heats up it somehow drops.

I finally solved the 5V issue by connecting it to my computer power supply. A 1200W beast!

However I still had the problem that I do not find the parallella board on my network.
Back to the forums and maybe because the SD card image was written incorrectly?
I recreated the image, got an powered usb hub and an hdmi cable. Hooked it up to my TV and connected a keyboard.

I expected to see something on my TV, the TV did react when I powered it on, but then signal loss.
I did notice the 3 green leds green but no IP address.

Apparently there are 2 images for Parallella desktop. Once that does not have hdmi active and another one that has it active.
So I downloaded the one with hdmi active tried to create the image and it turns out that Win32Disk requires a bigger card.
I noticed that the image is about 15 GB so I thought it would fit on a 16 GB but to be safe use a 32 GB.
The shop only had either 16 or 64 GB, and since I have no idea if Parallella can even support 64 GB I took the 16 GB.
At home I discovered that the image did not fit on a 16 GB.

Back to square 1, downloaded the image without hdmi support wrote it to the SD card.
Fired up Parallella, and I finally found the IP address 10.0.0.13!

Tried to connect to parallella with ssh but it fails. Ping works correctly but I can't login through ssh.
The first trial it somehow connects, but then fails. When I try again the I get a connection refused, until I power off and on again.

So I think that the image on the card is not correct, I will try again when I have found a 32 GB card and eventually can connect it to a monitor.

[DonQuichotte]

Welcome to the Parallella fan club, Olaf !

I smile a little when reading at your comments ; looks like tough beginnings too.
Well, there are a few good tutorials on the forum, try with SSH keyword in the "how to" (I mean: "Quick start guides and examples" under this forum)

If you want something that should work with no issue, I suggest Suzanne Matthews's tutorial, it was a good starter for me, a beginner too.
Based on his experience, I myself Don Quichotte de la Parallella wrote a tutorial, in the ./doc folder from the "Paralle2" project under "Parallella-examples" github.
With only:
- one external 5V / 2A... official power (I quote a good one)
- one standard Ethernet cable (and a computer with an Ethernet plug of course !)
- the Zynq 7020 headless image BEFORE the brand new one (something related to the network changed in the 2016.3 image, I did not yet investigate => stick to the 2015.1 image first)
and based on my tutorial and a minimal knowledge of Linux world you should boot with SSH and see the well beloved Parallella in action, waow !

Hope it helps ; I can explain further ; any feedback welcome anyway

[Olaf]

SUCCESS!!!!!

Ubuntu 15.04 Parallella (Zynq7010) headless image (2016.3 release, 727MB) failed on me, but

2016.3.1 release from yesterday works!

So the LEDS that must be on should be

* Green Power LED blinking
* Green other power LED none blinking on
* Ethernet green LED on
* Ethernet orange blinking from time to time. my previous failure did not show this orange LED blinking

Login is now ssh parallella@10.0.0.13
Password parallella

As a power supply I used the 4 molex connector from my PC that has enough amperage.
The inner wires is ground then you have 5 and 12 voltage at each side relative to the inner connectors.

I think that I will for starters build the Paralalla motherboard inside my computer casing. It has fan cooling and power supply.

[Olaf]

Next stage try to use Parallella as a computer

* Got a 32 GB SD card
* Wrote the image ubuntu-14.04-hdmi-z7010-20140611.img.gz (June 11, 2014, 2.1GB) to it.
* HDMI connection to my monitor
* Connected a powered hub to it so I had a keyboard and a mouse.

Boot: Via SSH: SUCCESS, see output to my monitor but can't seem to make the USB keyboard and USB mouse work.

I am not experienced enough with Linux, probably does not recognize my USB hub.

[DonQuichotte]

nice to hear the good news, Olaf.

Works for me too, with SDK 2016.3.1 headless Zynq 7020 image this weekend
Just pulled a Github request for adding my new SSH tutorial for this SDK... well I don't master Github yet, hope I did not break anything.

There are a lot of USB issues anywhere on the forum... personally I don't care USB.
I use the (still 2015.1) SDK compiled for my regular computer, so I can use "e-run", "e-objdump", "e-gcc" for early debugging, in conjunction with gcc explorer and my favourite editor.
Compiling on the Parallella is slower, it may take 30 s when you use nearly everything available (32 Kb program with the 'internal' format).

Nice to have a ztemp.sh utility directly on /home/parallella, good job guys
About 63 °C when doing nothing with it and no fan and 21 °C is the temperature of the room ; very stable, > 48 hours.
With a big fan it goes down to 43 °C
Well... with that I won't fear cold winters anymore

[Olaf]

I did try to get some kindish of a tutorial for first time users.

It is a fast track to get your parallella up and running, as I would have loved it.


It is very rewarding when you have your first "Hello World up and running".
As long as you have not, then you might incorrectly believe that the card is failing, while in reality it is working perfectly.

I looked at Youtube clips a, but they never really explain how you get there from scratch.

If you can get your card in the post follow the instructions and it shows on the screen that it really works, then hobbyists gets excited and share this on Youtube:
"12 year old kid has a supercomputer running in his home"