Blinka Support added to the BeagleV StarLight Beta Prototype @circuitpython #blinka @adafruit @makermelissa

At the end of April, we received a beta prototype of the BeagleV StarLight, which is an affordable RISC-V platform that can run Linux. This board isn’t currently available to the general public and is likely to change before the final hardware revision. It was offered in a limited supply to developers to encourage Software Development. We applied to be part of the program because we thought it would make a great board for adding Blinka support to make it more accessible as a single board computer.

After an initial attempt to try and get Blinka running, it appeared to not be ready to run it. A couple of weeks ago, a new image was released for the Fedora Linux OS and we decided to give Blinka support another try. It turns out that the latest image included the necessary components to get Blinka running on it including libgpiod. Armed with some LEDs and a Python script, we mapped out the libgpiod lines to the equivalent GPIOs (or General Purpose Input Outputs). The I2C lines were fairly easy to figure out because libgpiod narrowed that down and after a little trial and error, it just worked. Currently we have only tested GPIO and I2C successfully and hopefully more will be added.

Once final hardware is available to the general public, we will make and small adjustments to make sure it runs on there as well. If you are currently in possession of one of the boards and would like to give Blinka a try, the latest available image on the forum should work. You can find out more information in the public readme.