When I first looked at the Coral Dev Board, I was looking for something that wasn’t a Raspberry Pi, but I have one of those as well. The OEM Get Started is here and I’ve found most of it to work without too much fuss, at least to get the initial demo app running.
Not everyone is a fan, see Medium post here, but I see a bit more potential and I’m willing to give it a go.
And that’s fine for a demo. Delve a little bit further and you’ll discover it runs Mendel Linux, which in my opinion is a strange choice unless it adds some value (some of the rational here). I’ll illustrate with comparison to the NVIDIA Jetson Nano and Raspberry PI. The Nano runs JetPacks – OEM provided support packages tailored to their hardware, which makes sense. While the operating system is Linux 4Tegra based on Ubuntu (Ubuntu itself being based on Debian).
Where I struggled is support for Mendel is not readily available, it’s a bit too niche. This board is closely linked to the ASUS Tinker Edge T see here for a Qualified Vendor List (QVL), not here.
Where I did have some initial success was with BalenaOS. I created my connected fleet and got v2.48.0+rev5 working and showing in my dashboard. This opened a path to a common base, with management and security built in. My plan was to align development this base to build from, but this hit a snag when the later versions fail to load (to be covered by a separate post).
Support from Coral is limited and my tip would be to move sideways to the ASUS IoT Tinker Edge T and NXP i.MX 8M. There is a little bit of help provided by Mender too. I’ve put some further details of the forums under Resources > Communities.
The links to the i.MX 8M brought me back to work I started with the Toradex. The Yocto origin is apparent and good, but am I going to start my own Yocto built… probably not. It terms of stepping stones that’s where I am currently and left feeling that Mendel didn’t quite give me enough (thinking Raspberry Pi OS better than general OS in Ubuntu) and Balena had done the hard work from a Yocto start, but now held back on an outdated version.
Why it’s a shame? The underside of the Coral Dev Board has a 39-pin MIPI DSI connected for LCD screen. This connect type is supported by a number of LCD panels, but how to get started in Mendel. For me that’s the hitch, if Ubuntu or similar was an option the rough thrashing to get a working LCD could be progressed and if Mendel has some strong advantages ported back. As it stands justifying Mendel to support a single board/panel combo can’t see it. Compared to Raspberry Pi, more range of cameras, more support, etc.
Now, not everyone is a fan and support is, well, interesting. However, I think this post on Medium perhaps fails to see the potential. I’ll be adding to this post bit-by-bit. My latest project is to install Edge Impulse, which I’ve now done (see steps on GitHub). I had planned to use M5Stack Timer Cam F, but I hit a bit of a snag with ESP-IDF. I pivoted to the Coral Camera, but it is basically unavailable, so I’m waiting on a UVC-compatible camera to arrive. Fingers crossed either the ESP-IDF or the camera will unblock. I’ll keep hunting for the official Coral camera as well.
I did try to install v4.4 of ESP-IDF, but it was not without issues and then the submodules took up too much space. More to follow…