MYIR T536 Development Board: Multi-protocol IoT Gateway Solution Test

This evaluation report is provided by the developer "ALSET." The article details the development and testing of a multi-protocol IoT gateway solution that utilizes MYIR's MYD-LT536 development board, which is based on the Allwinner T536 SoC.

MYD-LT536 Development Board based on Allwinner T536 SoC

To fully leverage the development board and integrate the features of the T536 processor, we have conducted further software development to optimize hardware resource utilization and meet product requirements. Focusing on IoT multi-protocol gateway applications, this study establishes a foundational framework for hardware port data acquisition and socket-based network communication. While standard protocols such as MQTT and MODBUS are commonly used in typical IoT gateway development for hardware data collection and TCP/IP transmission, specific business scenarios require customized communication protocols based on TCP/IP or UDP.

MYIR provides comprehensive development resources for the board, including reference materials to help set up the required development environment. The package includes system firmware images, Bootloader source code, kernel driver source code, and a wide range of demo programs. Familiarizing yourself with these resources will enable you to quickly get your development environment up and running. All verification and testing will be performed on this specific development board.

1. Hardware Port Data Acquisition

MYIR's T536 development board supports a rich set of peripheral interfaces, making it highly suitable for industrial IoT signal acquisition and control. First, let's examine the hardware resources of the development board:

The MYD-LT536 development board offers a comprehensive set of IoT-oriented interfaces, including dual RS485, one RS232, dual CAN, three Ethernet ports, five USB ports, and a Local Bus interface. It is also equipped with LVDS and HP OUT/MIC IN audio-video multimedia ports, and integrates a 2 TOPS NPU and an 8M@30fps ISP. The system further supports 4K@25fps H.264 video encoding.

Here, the data from RS232 and RS485 ports is read first. A configurable data parameter reading method is designed, with the port configuration stored in the user directory of the board.

2. Port Configuration File

Through the use of port configuration, it is convenient to configure parameters, which aligns with application scenarios. In this manner, it can be deployed without modifying the program. The configured port file is as follows:

3. RPC (Remote Procedure Call)

To enable multi-purpose use of the read data, a multi-threaded approach is implemented. One thread is assigned to read data from the ports and push it into a system queue. Another thread can then retrieve and process the data, performing tasks such as exception detection, data smoothing, decimation, and averaging. A separate communication thread transmits the required data to other processes via process communication mechanisms, such as RPC. The design of the RPC thread program is outlined below:

4. Write scripts for the cross-compilation environment.

Once the build scripts are written and the entire project structure is established, transfer the project to the compilation host for building. Copy the project to the host's cross-compilation environment.

Then compile it directly:

It compiled successfully.

5. Development of the HTTP service program

IoT gateway devices commonly use web-based management interfaces to monitor the operational status of system applications and to perform essential configurations. This design features an embedded HTTP service program that integrates seamlessly with hardware components. Instead of relying on standalone web services such as nginx, we opt for the open-source htdc project for secondary development. This method facilitates the convenient integration of hardware access capabilities with specialized application functions. The system processes acquired port data through web gateways and delivers it to front-end pages using dynamic HTML scripts, which enables flexible page rendering and underlying access functionalities. The secondary development leverages the open-source htdc project.

The main code of the project is as follows:

The project directories are as follows:

Several running directories need to be created. tmpl is the front-end page template directory, where you can put html templates for http server programs to render and output the final HTML pages.

The www directory contains static resource files, such as images, style sheets, and js front-end scripts.

These directories also need to be created on the development board.

The project is compiled as follows:

It can be seen that the httpd board executable program has been successfully compiled. 

6. Design and develop the front-end page

To make this IoT gateway more intuitive and user-friendly, a set of front-end pages needs to be designed here to facilitate monitoring the gateway's operation and configuration of response files. Since front-end pages are not the primary development focus for the development board, we utilize AI-assisted design for front-end pages while also demonstrating the capabilities of AI in front-end page design. Here, we employ ByteDance's coze agent to design the front-end pages of the IoT gateway. First, open the Koudian Space page:

Describe in detail the content of our page design in the prompt, which is as follows

Then click generate. After about 5 minutes, the page code, style sheet file and related js code are generated. The generated content is as follows:

The output page content is as follows:

7. Manually adjust and modify the HTML front end page

The AI-generated webpage contained numerous errors and missing elements. The process involved manual error detection and correction, deletion of instance data replaced with global template variables, modification of static resource file locations, and adjustment of the XHR method for data access to a jQuery-based implementation.

8. Service program and front page template deployment

Transfer the port data service program and WEB background service program httpd to the development board, and transfer the page template to the same directory of httpd on the development board:

Front-end page deployment:

9. Service start-up

After deploying the service program, you can start the relevant service program. First, start

multi-serial-monitor

Open the browser, enter the IP of the development board, access the WEB page, and display it:

Summary

After preliminary data acquisition from multiple ports and transmission via communication channels, coupled with the use of multi-threaded operation modes and multi-process task management, we successfully completed testing of the T536 data acquisition and transmission program. An embedded HTTP service was developed to offer a user-friendly client management interface, ensuring a smooth development process that simplified the setup of the development board environment. Additionally, the multi-protocol gateway program on the development board can be extended to integrate with smart manufacturing control domains, such as intelligent buildings and smart factories. The comprehensive functionality of the development board and its tightly integrated subsystems allow for effortless IoT data development processes, significantly facilitating the creation of complex business logic and customized workflows.